:i^ 
 
 CLI\^DEN LIBRARY 
 
 Number ....'n 
 
 Date .ifli.iv
 
 AMERICA & BRITAIN
 
 AMERICA & BRITAIN 
 
 BY 
 
 ANDREW c. McLaughlin 
 
 HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, 
 UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 
 
 I9I9 
 
 LONDON y TORONTO 
 J. M. DENT ^ SONS LTD.
 
 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 In the early spring of 191 8 the Imperial 
 Studies Committee of the University of London 
 suggested to the American Historical Association 
 that they would heartily welcome a visit from a 
 well-known American historian, to explain to 
 British audiences something of the course of 
 events which had brought the United States from 
 political isolation to stand side by side with the 
 AlHes in the world war. The Association and the 
 National Board for Historical Service, represent- 
 ing the Departments of History in the American 
 Universities, took up the proposal warmly, and 
 deputed Prof. Andrew C. McLaughlin, of the 
 University of Chicago, and Mr. Charles Moore, 
 Chairman of the Federal Commission of Fine 
 Arts, to speak for American historians in the 
 British Universities. Their most imjportant work 
 was done in the University of London, and we 
 have here collected the lectures delivered by 
 Prof. McLaughlin in University College in 
 May 191 8, together with a paper read before 
 the Royal Historical Society. Owing to diffi- 
 culties of postage the proofs have been read in 
 England, and Prof. McLaughlin has been unable 
 to see the lectures in their collected form. 
 
 A. P. N. 
 
 University College, 
 
 London, December 191 8. 
 
 V
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Of the papers here printed, four were originally 
 given as lectures in the University of London 
 in May 191 8. The first was also read, with 
 some slight modifications and additions, to a 
 number of audiences in the United Kingdom, 
 generally under university or college auspices. 
 The fifth paper was read before the Royal His- 
 torical Society, and has already been printed in 
 the American Political Science Review. I have 
 consented to the publication of the lectures with 
 some misgivings, my chief reason for hesitation 
 being an appreciation of the fact that lectures 
 are not essays ; they are prepared to be spoken, 
 and, if put into print, may well appear quite 
 different in tone and temper and even character. 
 Especially is this likely to be the case when 
 lectures are thought to be adapted to a special 
 occasion and a particular audience. It is, how- 
 ever, too late to repent the decision to print, 
 and they are here presented with the hope that 
 they may be of some slight service in helping 
 to strengthen the good feeling and sense of com- 
 radeship between the British and the American 
 people. 
 
 As an admirer of Great Britain, I have felt 
 
 vii
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 free to speak quite openly, and have not allowed 
 myself merely to indulge in pleasantries and 
 oratorical adulation. I have referred without 
 reserve to prejudices and misunderstandings of 
 the past, which we hope are now laid definitely 
 aside, and I have not shrunk from giving my own 
 opinion of Britain's errors. If I seem to dwell 
 on these too much, it is because I have desired 
 not to give the appearance of avoiding disagreeable 
 truths or what, at least, I deem to be truths. 
 It is a privilege to speak in a frank and friendly 
 way to a tolerant and kindly people. 
 
 The article called the " Background of American 
 Federalism " may be of interest at the present 
 time when so many persons in Britain are dis- 
 cussing federalism, and if correct in its analysis 
 of the disputes of the American Revolution — as 
 I am confident after many years of study it is — it 
 discloses, not only that the old British Empire is 
 the source of the central principle of federalism, 
 but also that the political problem now holding 
 the attention of British students and men of 
 affairs is, in its essence, of very long standing. 
 
 In various places, I mention what I believe to 
 be the wholesome and beneficent effects of liberal- 
 ism. It is doubtless unnecessary to say that I 
 have no party principles in mind and no party 
 differences. I mean only those general senti- 
 ments and convictions and that faith and confi- 
 dence in the rights and character of the main body 
 of the people, which constitute the foundation 
 of the British and American poHtical structures,
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 and wliich, lived up to with some consider- 
 able conscientiousness in domestic politics, have 
 necessarily affected imperial administration and 
 policy, and also created a point of view and a 
 fixed principle of guidance for dealing with the 
 perplexities of international relationships and 
 responsibilities. 
 
 I must acknowledge my great indebtedness 
 to The Monroe Doctrine : an Interpretation, by 
 Professor A. B. Hart. His careful collection of 
 excerpts from State Papers and the writings of 
 American statesmen was of considerable service 
 to me in the preparation of the lecture on the 
 Monroe Doctrine. 
 
 Andrew C. McLaughlin. 
 
 Chicago, 
 
 September 191 8.
 
 /
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 America's Entry into the War : An His- 
 torical Statement .... 
 
 British and American Relations — I 
 
 » )) )> 11 . 
 
 The Monroe Doctrine .... 
 The Background of American Federalism 
 
 PAGE 
 
 31 
 
 80 
 
 XI
 
 " I now see that more than patriotism is necessary." — 
 Edith Cavell. 
 
 " You cannot be truly free, unless we are free too ; for 
 «uch is the nature of things, that he who entrenches on the 
 liberty of others is the first to lose his own and become a 
 slave." — ^JoHN Milton, in the Second Defence of the People of 
 England, addressing Cromwell. 
 
 [We may invert the above declaration of Milton, and say : 
 " We cannot be truly free, unless you are free too ; 
 for such is the nature of things, that he who loses his 
 own liberty is the first to entrench on the liberty of 
 others." — (The message of the Allies to Germany.)] 
 
 " The destruction of Old England would hurt me. I wish 
 it well ; it afforded my ancestors an asylum from persecution." 
 — John Jay to Gouverneur Morris, 1778. 
 
 " ' It is a remembrance of mine, now hard to realize, that 
 I was brought up to abhor the memory of George III.' At 
 this she smiled and answered, ' That was very unjust, for I 
 was brought up to adore the memory of George Washington.' " 
 — Conversation between Andrew D. White and the Empress 
 Frederick, the daughter of Queen Victoria and the great- 
 granddaughter of George III. Reported in the Autobiography 
 of Andrew D. White, 
 
 xu
 
 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 AMERICA'S ENTRY INTO THE WAR: 
 AN HISTORICAL STATEMENT i 
 
 An audience of intelligent and well-read 
 British people is well aware of the fact that 
 America long held aloof from the complications 
 of European politics, but it is not altogether easy 
 to comprehend how remote were the diplomatic 
 controversies of this side of the ocean. Even the 
 intellectual classes discussed such questions 
 seldom, and when the subject was discussed the 
 matter appeared distant and devoid of immediate 
 interest ; it was impersonal and bookish. Only 
 those that had travelled in Europe had much 
 notion of the tension existing on the Continent, 
 and only keen observers discovered that, for it 
 was not to be seen on a hurried holiday trip 
 through the art galleries of the Old World. We 
 had little or no knowledge of the ever-vexed 
 Balkans, and had cyclopaedic ignorance of the 
 Eastern question. Individually we may have had 
 
 ^ A lecture delivered at University College on May 7, 1918, 
 with the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour in the chair 
 B
 
 2 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 our sympathies and our mild antipathies, but 
 as a people we were unsuspicious, guileless, and 
 unsophisticated. Some of these attributes may 
 appear to be inapplicable, for you may know that 
 in governmental matters we have sometimes 
 been sharp, perhaps I should say aggressive, but, 
 on the whole, as a people we live in an air of 
 toleration. 
 
 I trust that the Italian historian was in part 
 wrong when he contrasted Europe with America, 
 saying that Europe was clouded with hate and 
 America brightened by friendliness ; but I am 
 confident that we as a nation were free from 
 mean suspicions and lived in an atmosphere of 
 good nature. This good nature is not necessarily 
 temperamental. We are not good-natured now 
 — we are ugly. Our good-naturedness was in 
 large measure the product of ignorance, of 
 absorption in our own affairs, and of intense 
 interest in the game of business, in the task of 
 social betterment, and in political controversy. 
 Foreign affairs touched us only slightly. More- 
 over, we were a composite people, priding our- 
 selves on our capacity to accept and to make our 
 own the peoples of many nations. We watched, 
 those of us that had intellectual interest in 
 national development, the steady stream of 
 immigrants pouring into the land, and though 
 we often had misgivings we were generally 
 carried along by characteristic optimism, and by 
 a wholesome faith in the power of American 
 ideals to make the newcomers into citizens
 
 AMERICA'S ENTRY INTO THE WAR 3 
 
 feeling and thinking as the rest of us did. Pre- 
 judices and disHkes and suspicions of alien peoples 
 were, therefore, foreign to us ; we did not 
 reason about it, or ponder the problem particu- 
 larly, we simply moved along unaware of danger 
 and without feeHng. Many of you will say to 
 yourselves : " Much of this is also true of Britain ; 
 we have not nursed hatred or encouraged sus- 
 picion of other nations ; we, too, have been 
 friendly and open-minded." If you are saying 
 so, you are doubtless speaking the truth. Cer- 
 tainly in America we were quite unprepared for 
 an appreciation of the psychology of Germany, 
 for any understanding of that mean jealousy, the 
 petty and gross intolerance, the suspicions and 
 sly intrigue which we have at last come to know 
 so well. 
 
 For a hundred years and more America has 
 been free from the entanglements of European 
 politics. We appeared to have but one principle 
 of foreign politics, and that was to mind our own 
 business and to let Europe alone. Occasionally 
 we were reminded that America had become a 
 world-power, but most of us smiled at the ex- 
 pression, thinking we had been a world-power for 
 a century or more, and not believing that we were 
 called upon to abandon our old policy of isolation 
 or be caught up in the tangled skein of Europe. 
 We had one fixed poHcy, the Monroe Doctrine, 
 which meant what it might mean — for it was a 
 perfect chameleon among doctrines — but, con- 
 veniently adaptable to exigencies of international
 
 4 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 affairs in the Western Hemisphere, it was rigid in 
 its apphcation to Europe. America, for her own 
 safety, for her own interest, was to lead her own 
 life, and follow her own courses. This policy, if 
 policy it may be called, for it is, after all, rather a 
 feeling, a sentiment, and a tradition than a policy, 
 may appear to you narrow and provincial, the child 
 of selfishness and of ignorance. Well, I am not 
 here to defend or apologize ; I can only say that 
 conditions are much as I have described them ; 
 and, again, you may possibly say that you, too, 
 in the care of your vast Empire, would have been 
 quite content to be left alone ; you would have 
 been more than satisfied, most of you, if you 
 could have believed that you could go on quite 
 freely to do your best with your own problems 
 without fear of molestation or interference from 
 some jealous outsider. 
 
 The Monroe Doctrine is defended by practically 
 all American students of history for what it has 
 accomplished, but, right or wrong, it was popularly 
 held and supported ; it is practically the only 
 policy of State which we have ever had, and which 
 through the whole of our national existence has 
 maintained itself and strangely persisted despite 
 the developments of modern history, despite the 
 fact that the ocean has become a highway and 
 not a barrier, despite the strength of commercial 
 and intellectual bonds connecting us with 
 Europe, despite the growth of democracy over 
 here and the extension of those principles of 
 popular government which at one time we justly
 
 AMERICA'S ENTRY INTO THE WAR 5 
 
 thought were our pecuUar possession. But deeper, 
 more far-reaching than a poHcy of State embalmed 
 in a phrase was the strength of tradition, our one 
 tradition, and deeper still a sentiment, a feeling, 
 an attitude of mind, a sense that we were to move 
 along fulfilling as best we might our own destiny, 
 and carrying our burdens as steadily as our own 
 strength permitted. 
 
 To-day America is stirred as it never has been 
 before ; not even in the days of our own Civil 
 War, I think, was feeling more intense or thought 
 more bitter. We know that America has been 
 called to its own, called to give proof on the field 
 of battle that it values honour and liberty and 
 truth and fair dealing more than life. We are 
 not ignobly striving for profit or territorial 
 aggrandizement ; we have no hidden purpose in 
 our detestation of the forces which have plunged 
 the world into the misery of unspeakable sorrow 
 and desolation. But this I must say — and I 
 believe I speak truthfully and with some slight 
 knowledge — you and I should err if we did not 
 see how difficult it was to reach the conviction 
 that a European struggle was ours also ; how 
 difficult, how extremely difficult, to uproot those 
 habits of thought which I believe I have not 
 described too strongly. No one can be sure how 
 thoroughly hereafter we shall participate in 
 world affairs. I know not what to say, or how to 
 express the contradictory impressions that come to 
 me. I am confident of intense earnestness, of a 
 profound feeling of duty, of pride in the leadership
 
 6 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 of a great American, whose vision is wide and 
 whose love of humanity is strong. I am confident 
 of deep and vivid sympathy for the unhappy 
 Belgians to whom we have given food and care 
 and money. We have admiration for brave, 
 sorrow-stricken France and for the quiet, masterful 
 strength of Britain, by whose side we gladly 
 fight. But I cannot be sure that we have alto- 
 gether cast aside old supports or barriers, or that 
 we have reached a stage where we can think 
 internationally. It may be, we do not know, it 
 may be that the old days of isolation are gone ; 
 it may be that we are henceforth to play a con- 
 spicuous role in the affairs of the world. To mc 
 that appears inevitable. Isolation conflicts with 
 realities of modern life too strongly, our duty is 
 too clear, your hopes for civilization and peace 
 are too nearly identical with ours, the world is 
 too nearly one organic whole, the needs of human- 
 ity are too pressing to allow a nation like America 
 to live its own life heedless and unmindful of 
 responsibility for affairs beyond its borders ; 
 and so we may expect intelligent and, I hope, 
 high-minded and generous participation of 
 America in world affairs ; but no one can be sure 
 just how thoroughly we have cast aside our old 
 habits. 
 
 From describing American attitude towards 
 foreign affairs before the war I have passed on to 
 a consideration of the present and the future, for 
 already the past seems long past, and the present 
 holds us in its grasp. I must endeavour, however,
 
 AMERICA'S ENTRY INTO THE WAR 7 
 
 for the time, at least, to keep my mind within 
 those early trying and soul-harrowing years 
 when we were amazed, distracted, doubtful, 
 full of newly awakened interest and newly aroused 
 foreboding, stirred with sympathy and with 
 hitherto unfelt passions, groping amid new scenes, 
 learning new enmities, finding that we were in 
 the presence of a dark, unseemly force that most 
 of us had not dreamed of, holding fast, over- 
 stubbornly, it may be, but holding still to what 
 we were or had been, believing or trying to 
 believe, or struggling out of the belief, that this 
 war was not our war, turning over in our minds 
 the responsibility involved in calling 100,000,000 
 peaceful people to arms, obtaining ourselves or 
 hoping that the man on the street was getting a 
 wider outlook on the world wherein he might 
 see that patriotism is not enough — see narrow- 
 souled patriotism exalting its own Kultur and 
 beating down the life and hope of a wider human- 
 ity. From what I have already said it will be 
 plain that a mental change and a sentimental 
 change had to come before this wider outlook 
 could be had ; knowledge had to be gathered 
 and new interests had to be created. 
 
 If I have been rightly informed, British notions 
 of the American population are in danger of 
 falling into one of two opposite errors. On the 
 one side is the belief that we are a British people 
 who a hundred years or more ago broke away 
 from Britain, and are still in all essentials British 
 to the core. On the other side is the belief that
 
 8 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 British stock has been entirely submerged and 
 that the land is filled with a myriad of men of 
 different races but slightly affected by the culture 
 and mental habits of the Mother Country. No 
 one can with perfect precision describe the Ameri- 
 can people, certainly not in a few words, but it 
 can be said with considerable positiveness that 
 we are neither one thing nor the other. Even 
 of the eighteenth century it could truthfully be 
 said that not England but Europe was the Mother 
 of America. The flood of emigrants that have 
 come in the past fifty years in constantly in- 
 creasing numbers has filled our land with millions 
 of persons whose traditions are not British. A 
 considerable portion of these persons have become 
 Americanized, their children have learned the 
 Enghsh language and have been absorbed into 
 our life. In 1910 the foreign white stock amounted 
 to about one-third of the total population, 
 32,000,000 people. By foreign white stock I 
 mean persons born in Europe or the children of 
 foreign born. Of these 8,000,000 were German, 
 though these figures do not include Austrian 
 Germans ; 2,500,000 were German born. In 
 recent years there has been an influx of Russians, 
 mostly Russian Jews, and also many Italians, 
 with not a few Greeks. How far had these 
 people, even those that had been in the land 
 a decade or two, been actually absorbed .? I 
 cannot answer, but there are one or two things 
 I can say with some assurance. Most of these 
 people were proud of American citzenship, most
 
 AMERICA'S ENTRY INTO THE WAR 9 
 
 of them felt that they had cast the past aside, 
 many of them showed an appreciation for the 
 elemental ideas of American life. And this leads 
 me to a consideration of the other belief that 
 some of you may hold, that this flood has sub- 
 merged the old British stock. Here, again, the 
 whole truth is illusive, but the main outstanding 
 fact is, in my judgment, the astonishing vigour 
 of Anglo-Saxon life. Nothing is to me, as I 
 study American history and American conditions, 
 more impressive than the force of the essentials 
 of Anglo-American civilization. The influences 
 of language, of literature, of law, have exerted, 
 and will continue to exert, steady pressure, and 
 the resulting civilization will be largely identical 
 with your own. After all, there is something 
 compelling in the principles of individual liberty, 
 in those principles of political thought and action 
 which America inherited from Britain. 
 
 We have no conscious desire to counteract the 
 qualities brought^to our shores by the men from 
 the European Continent. When in the past we 
 have spoken of the immigration problem, and 
 realized the difficulties, we have not said : " Can 
 these 'people be inoculated with the qualities of 
 Anglo-Saxonism, can they be brought under the 
 sway of the old British stock ? " We have said : 
 " Can we be sure that these people will become 
 American, patriotic, and law-abiding ? Will they 
 accept what even in these latter days we call 
 the ideals of American citizenship ? " And it 
 must be remembered that one of those ideals
 
 10 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 was hospitality, opportunity for the man of the 
 Old World to start over again on our shores, and 
 to go on and up with us. We have had no desire, 
 and we have now no desire, to influence these 
 people to any fixed standards of racial life. 
 
 I am discussing this subject only to show you 
 certain elementary factors in a complicated 
 situation. My intention is not to impugn the 
 patriotism of the civic virtues of the recent 
 immigrants ; but it must be plain that among 
 them sympathy for Britain would play no part ; 
 there would be no instinctive response to the 
 needs of any foreign country, save the one or the 
 other with which they were racially connected, 
 and perhaps not with that. Many of these 
 persons left the Old World to escape its military 
 burdens. My object, let me repeat, is not to 
 complain of the attitude of these millions, nor, 
 on the other hand, to praise or defend them. To 
 me the striking fact is this, that the vast majority 
 were prepared, when the time came, to follow 
 the flag of the United States, quietly to take up 
 the load of war, and to walk forward with no 
 other thought than patriotic devotion to the 
 country of their adoption and the principles 
 which they knew you as well as we are flghting 
 for. 
 
 There is one other thought which I must offer, 
 a simple one, but of real significance. The war 
 was far away. I have emphasized our detachment 
 and our seclusion from the political affairs of 
 Europe, but I am speaking now only of the
 
 AMERICA'S ENTRY INTO THE WAR ii 
 
 difficulty with which incidents are made real by 
 the imagination, if those incidents are three or 
 four thousand miles distant. You will say, 
 perchance, that distance did not cloud the mind 
 of the Australian or the South African. All the 
 more honour to them. But, again, and I speak 
 solely of facts as I see them, it was hard, very 
 hard, for the average man in a prairie town of the 
 Mississippi Valley to feel the actuality of the 
 stories told him in his weekly paper. Such men 
 as I have in mind are not unintelligent, they are 
 not hopelessly narrow and dull. But they did 
 not instinctively realize that this was their war. 
 The reason will be given by any tyro in psycho- 
 logy : the war lacked immediateness. 
 
 If any considerable portion of what I have said 
 is true, then time was necessary to awaken new 
 ideas and to get new points of view. Passions, 
 I know, for which there has been emotional 
 preparation, can quickly sweep across the Conti- 
 nent, but, while we are a sensitive people, and 
 react quickly to certain irritants, it is just im- 
 possible for a wave of impulse to pass from one 
 side of the land to the other, unless by our previous 
 history the brain-tracts have been developed 
 through thought and experience. Of course, 
 that is' true of all peoples. The Germans flew 
 to arms, flung themselves into war, because their 
 minds had been dwelling on war, and because of 
 the psychological effects of militarism. But 
 America was in its essence a country of peace ; 
 men's minds needed to be wrenched from their
 
 12 ' AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 moorings, or shunted on to new lines altogether, 
 before they could even conceive of the barbarity 
 of v^ar. 
 
 Our population also lacked homogeneity, and 
 you cannot by a single spark send a fire of passion 
 through 100,000,000 men not in psychological 
 contact. Plainly, then, the American people 
 required time to learn, time to become homo- 
 geneous in their attitude towards the great 
 question of the war. I am not contending 
 that we ought to have gone to war earlier ; I 
 am trying to be detached, unargumentative. 
 
 If you still ask why the common man did not 
 more quickly grasp the complexities of the 
 European conflict, I ask you in turn to let your 
 mind wander from New York, with its millions 
 of foreign-born citizens, its great wealth, and its 
 vast material splendour, prosperity, and poverty, 
 onward across the Continent, over the Appa- 
 lachians, across the prairies dotted with innu- 
 merable farmhouses and villages and populous 
 towns, onwards to California and the Pacific, 
 three thousand miles away, or down through the 
 cotton-raising South and up to the wheat regions 
 of Minnesota and the Dakotas, then over to the 
 iron and copper regions of Michigan. Face the 
 difficulty of actually reproducing in your own 
 mind the conditions of life, the spirit and the 
 temper of that vast region, and, if you do, you 
 will appreciate the task we had in visualizing 
 Europe, and you will possibly be astonished, as I 
 sometimes am, not that we moved slowly, but
 
 / 
 
 ( 
 
 AMERICA'S ENTRY INTO THE WAR 13 
 
 that finally, little by little, step by step, we came 
 to feel as a nation and as a single whole, to see the 
 thing in all its naked and vulgar ugliness, this 
 thing with which we had to fight, in defence of 
 civiHzation and the elementary principles of 
 decency and manly justice. 
 
 What were the American sympathies in the 
 earlier months of the war ? You can probably 
 answer that yourselves. In many quarters there 
 was intuitive and instantaneous sympathy for 
 the Alhed cause. Many of us, ignorant as we 
 were, had learned something of German military 
 ambition. Some of us had knowledge of German 
 arrogance. Some of us realized that a War Lord 
 reigned in Berlin, and we had long beHeved that 
 his great military estabHshment menaced the 
 peace of Europe. Such persons reacted to the 
 side of Britain and France almost at the very 
 beginning — strongly, as soon as they saw the 
 facts ; — but I venture to say that if there was 
 hesitation in reaching definite conclusions no 
 one who has read the history of modern diplomacy 
 will altogether blame the hesitant. But soon 
 came the British Blue Book, with the dispatches 
 of your Foreign Office ; the thing we wanted to 
 know was : Who began this war ? We wanted 
 to know authoritatively, documentarily, un- 
 equivocally — and we found out. We discovered 
 the truth we were seeking, in part from the British 
 Blue Book ; and its revelations were considerately 
 confirmed by the German White Book. This 
 German volume is the most important document
 
 14 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 of the war ; a revelation of military arrogance, of 
 haughty intolerance. It was convincing even 
 more by what it omitted than by what it con- 
 tained ; for if the old adage was ever true it was 
 true of this particular volume : The suppression 
 of the truth is the confession of falsehood. 
 
 What I am now saying must appear to you 
 like lines from ancient history, and for that 
 matter so does it to me. But I need to recall 
 for historical accuracy the painful interest with 
 which we turned the leaves of the Blue and White 
 and Grey Books as they came to hand, and how 
 those of us having access to their pages were 
 enlightened in our sympathies and steeled in our 
 repugnance to the methods of autocratic mili- 
 tarism. The story of the scrap of paper set 
 America to thinking hard. Never did the carry- 
 ing power of a phrase more clearly manifest 
 itself. Then for some months we studied and 
 discussed the invasion of Belgium, and began to 
 gather in the tales of German atrocities, at first 
 with incredulity, but with steadily growing 
 amazement and indignation. Doubtless you 
 passed through the same mental experiences 
 yourselves. Can one be ashamed of his un- 
 willingness to believe that a nation calHng itself 
 civilized could be guilty of the cruelty practised 
 by the German Army in Belgium ? In our case, 
 as perhaps in yours, it was only after the publica- 
 tion of the Bryce Report with the accompanying 
 documents that we saw the reality and believed 
 the unbelievable. We discovered, then, what
 
 AMERICA'S ENTRY INTO THE WAR 15 
 
 militarism meant in its final qualities — militarism 
 which inculcated devastation and terrorism as a 
 portion of definite military policy. Belgium 
 settled the sympathies of the great mass of the 
 people of America. We saw the whole horrible 
 thing was premeditated, planned with cold, 
 calculating, repulsive German efficiency. We 
 realized that mobilization plans are not formed in 
 a moment or strategic railways laid down in a 
 night ; we realized that Realpolitik — the very 
 word a reproach — included deceit as well as 
 barbarity. Even in these days of misgiving and 
 distress we may take some comfort possibly in 
 believing that international bullying, Macht- 
 politik, was shattered when it shocked the con- 
 science of the world. John Bright, I believe it 
 was, said that the only value of war is to teach 
 geography ; but this war taught a language. We 
 learned what Schrecklichkeit means ; and we 
 discovered that terrorism is involved in the whole 
 philosophy of war when it is carried out with 
 relentless thoroughness and with logical disregard 
 for the ordinary promptings of compassion. 
 
 German propagandists early began to cultivate 
 American opinion. I do not know what effects 
 missionaries of Kultur like Herr Dernburg made 
 on the popular mind. On the whole I imagine 
 Herr Dernburg himself believes to-day that he 
 did more harm than good. Certainly more harm 
 if he succeeded in arousing the passion and in- 
 creasing the prejudices of German-Americans, 
 and certainly harm for the German cause if he
 
 1 6 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 awakened resentment in the hearts of such simple- 
 minded Americans as were aware of his purposes. 
 The great body of the American people were not 
 hoodwinked by the German propagandists. A 
 famous American said early in the war that he had 
 been asked by British friends whether it would be 
 well to send material to America to win the people 
 to the cause of the Allies, and he replied : " I 
 do not think it is at all necessary ; the American 
 people at large have a good deal of sense, when all 
 is said, and, if their good sense fail, the German 
 Ambassador will help them to appreciate the 
 rectitude of the Allied position." 
 
 The attempts of German propagandists to 
 justify the invasion of Belgium showed an astonish- 
 ing inability or unwillingness to make frank use 
 of public documentary material. Documents 
 found in the Belgian archives showed that some 
 years ago an English military oihcer and a Belgian 
 official had consulted together as to what steps 
 England should take in case Germany invaded 
 Belgium. After Germany had done the very 
 thing which England and Belgium had feared, 
 German propagandists tried to justify her by 
 declaring that Belgium was considering means 
 of preventing it. The use made of the documents 
 '^actually affronted our inteUigence and added 
 to our distrust. 
 
 You are about to ask me why America did not 
 plunge into the war or immediately prepare for 
 the conflict, just as soon as the enormity of 
 Prussian deceit and cruelty was realized. Again
 
 AMERICA'S ENTRY INTO THE WAR 17 
 
 I cannot tell you, and again I refrain from speaking 
 apologetically or in condemnation. I can only 
 say that a very few, a very limited number, in my 
 judgment, believed by the early spring of 19 15 
 that this war was our war in the sense that we 
 should enter. After all, did a nation ever before 
 in the world's history enter a conflict only because 
 it loathed the principles and despised the conduct 
 of another nation, solely because of moral indigna- 
 tion, or have nations been led into war by ministers 
 or rulers, or for some evident material gain ? 
 My historical information may be insufficient, 
 but, as I see it, the nearest approach to such 
 altruistic conduct was when you yourselves 
 entered this war and sent over your famous little 
 army to win imperishable glory and to die on 
 the field of honour at Mons. Pray do not accuse 
 me of dealing in smart retort. You are no 
 stronger defender of British honour, courage, 
 and high-mindedness than I am. I claim at 
 such a time as this and in this presence no indul- 
 gence as an ignorant outsider. But am I not 
 right in thinking that your interests in some 
 respects coincided or appeared to coincide with 
 your duty and your honour ? If you answer no, 
 that you offered all for humanity, I shall not 
 deny yoil. I am not wrong, however, I think, in 
 attributing to Mr. Balfour himself the remark, 
 when we did enter the war, that it was the most 
 magnanimous and generous act in history. 
 
 May I give one more answer to why we did 
 not enter the war as soon as Machtpolitik was 
 c
 
 1 8 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 revealed in all its hideousness — an answer, I 
 mean, not already suggested by the earlier portions 
 of my remarks in which I attempted to portray 
 American psychological condition ? The answer 
 is this : a great many persons were strengthened 
 in their antipathy to war. Instead of making 
 men more warlike the struggle in Europe made 
 them more determined to keep the peace. We 
 clung to an ideal not totally foolish, though 
 time proved it to be vain. We believed that the 
 stricken world might actually be benefited if one 
 great nation should keep out of the struggle. 
 We thought, not stupidly, though wrongly, that 
 the spectacle of a nation's standing almost unarmed 
 and totally unafraid might be of some service in 
 ushering in the day of peace and of reconciliation. 
 
 Of one thing I can speak with much confidence 
 — and in such a complicated matter it is comfort- 
 ing to have one sure piece of solid ground to 
 stand upon — the financial gain from neutrality 
 entered into our calculations not with the weight 
 of a farthing. Profits from munition-making or 
 from trade influenced the general sense of the 
 country not one iota. At no time did we measure 
 our duty or our interest in dollars and cents or 
 scan with mean avidity the pages of our ledgers. 
 Occasionally, it is true, one heard of the advan- 
 tages offered by the war for increasing our trade 
 with South America ; but here again in no 
 appreciable degree did this enter into our 
 calculations or sear our consciences. 
 
 Shall I say a word about the Lusita?iia, about
 
 AMERICA'S ENTRY INTO THE WAR 19 
 
 that shameful, premeditated, advertised, and 
 dastardly crime ? It is difficult even now to speak 
 about it with calmness, and there is no reason 
 why one should. You know, of course, of 
 President Wilson's messages, and you know that 
 here and in America as well there was some 
 sharp criticism because he did not follow his words 
 with immediate and energetic action. There 
 are many to-day who believe that, if he had then 
 spoken the word, America would have sprung to 
 arms, that the masses of the people were waiting 
 for the word. Well, who can tell ? I think 
 myself that even then, in the spring of 191 5, the 
 people were not ready. Some believed, or strove 
 to believe, that we had no right to furnish 
 munitions to the Allies ; many had not yet fully 
 realized the enormity of Germany's criminality. 
 Only, I repeat, only by a partial understanding 
 of the America I have sought to describe to you 
 can one see the difficulty of arousing the people 
 to war. America is a democratic country ; the 
 people do not blindly follow leadership or accept 
 opinions from others. If the President had 
 taken a false step, he would have lost his powers 
 of guidance, and, moreover, though many were 
 bitter and all were unhappy, the masses of sensible, 
 sober people, unlearned in matters of interna- 
 tional law, did not readily see how totally illegal 
 and totally brutal was the attack on unoffend- 
 ing travellers and non-combatants. Moreover — 
 and here is the most crucial but more illusive 
 and intangible thing — the nation, in its very
 
 20 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 reluctance to act, in its readiness to wait, in its 
 willingness to accept affront and injury, showed 
 certain qualities of intelligent patience, a certain 
 obstinate love of peace, a certain over-indulgence 
 in the desire to be fair-minded. It was one of 
 those maddening and inhibiting contradictions 
 such as illuminate and darken the course of his- 
 tory — idealism and rectitude of purpose standing 
 in some measure in their own light. 
 
 All through those years we hoped, as probably 
 the President did, that we could save the shattered 
 fabric of international law by protest and expos- 
 tulation. That appeared the chiefest duty of a 
 neutral nation ; that duty might justify the 
 retention of neutrality even when we ourselves 
 were suffering injury at the hands of the bel- 
 ligerents. That duty possibly justified even our 
 complaints of the British blockade, which, I 
 think it must be confessed, constituted at least 
 an unexpected expansion of the legal privileges 
 of a belligerent. Of course, as we now see, words 
 could have no effect on a German Government, 
 bent on beating down all opposition and on 
 setting up its appetite as the central principle 
 of international law ; but I cannot help thinking 
 there was at least some evidence of character 
 and considerable right-mindedness in our hope 
 that argument and stern rebuke would save some- 
 thing from the wreckage. 
 
 After the Sussex affair, in the summer of 1 91 6, 
 our relations with the German Government were 
 again greatly strained, but President Wilson
 
 AMERICA'S ENTRY INTO THE WAR 21 
 
 succeeded in getting a promise that merchantmen 
 should not be sunk without warning and without 
 saving lives, unless the vessel should resist or 
 attempt to escape. This promise was coupled 
 with a condition that we should compel Great 
 Britain to surrender what Berlin asserted to be 
 an illegal blockade. Remembering, possibly, the 
 net into which Napoleon enticed James Madison 
 about 107 years ago, our Government did not 
 accept the condition, but warned Germany that 
 her obligations were " individual, not joint, 
 absolute, and not relative." We rested easier ; 
 but we now realize that this willingness to forgo 
 the sinking of peaceful vessels and the taking of 
 lives can be accounted for by the fact that the 
 old U-boats were being destroyed and the 
 Teutonic Powers did not then have in readiness 
 the large and improved monsters of the deep 
 with which to carry on the work of destruction. 
 Conditions were bad enough during the latter 
 half of 1 91 6, but with the beginning of the new 
 year ruthless warfare was openly and brazenly 
 instituted. With the announcement that no 
 warning would be given when ships were sunk 
 within a war zone (191 7), cutting off nearly the 
 whole coast of Western Europe, President Wilson 
 sent the German Ambassador home, and war 
 seemed inevitable. One of the astounding reve- 
 lations of the particular methods of the German 
 Foreign Office was the announcement, made by 
 the Chancellor to the Reichstag and the German 
 people, that President Wilson had broken off
 
 22 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 diplomatic relations abruptly, although the step 
 was taken eighteen months or more after the 
 exchange of dispatches on the Lusitania crime, 
 and half a year after the exchange of notes about 
 the Sussex. 
 
 Why did President Wilson, after long effort to 
 maintain neutrality and even to hasten the coming 
 of peace, finally advocate war ? Before attempt- 
 ing to answer this question let us recall the 
 President's efforts to bring the conflicting nations 
 to a statement of their terms, and to hold out to 
 the world the conception of the establishment of 
 permanent peace. The President's message on 
 this subject came out almost simultaneously with 
 Germany's proposal in which she suggested 
 peace on the basis of an assumed victory for her 
 army. Such a peace the AlHed nations could 
 not accept without accepting militarism, without 
 losing the all-important objects for which millions 
 of men had already given their lives ; and probably 
 most of us in America believed that such proposals 
 were put forth chiefly to make the German 
 people think that the Allies were the aggressors 
 and must bear the odium of further conflict. 
 When the President called on the warring nations 
 to state their terms, possibly he still cherished 
 the hope that, if terms were frankly stated, 
 negotiations might actually be begun ; almost 
 certainly he desired such open statement as 
 would show to the world at large the real essence 
 of the conflict, and also show that we were not 
 ready to enter the struggle until we had made
 
 AMERICA'S ENTRY INTO THE WAR 23 
 
 every possible effort to bring peace. The Presi- 
 dent's appeal produced no very tangible results, 
 although the Allied Povi^ers stated their desires 
 and purposes with considerable definiteness, and 
 these terms did not appear to us unreasonable 
 or unworthy. 
 
 Throughout this time the President and all 
 thinking Americans were interested chiefly in 
 the maintenance of civilization, and they looked 
 forward not merely to victory or 'to the acquisition 
 of territory by one or another nation, but to the 
 foundation of a lasting peace by the establishment 
 of principles of justice and reason. We found 
 that we could not paint in too dark colours the 
 future of the world if we are all to remain under 
 the pall of fear and suspicion, and under the 
 overwhelming burden of armament ; and thus 
 we came to see that without America's entrance 
 into this war there was little hope for relief from 
 the crushing weight of war and the almost equally 
 burdensome weight of ever-increasing armed 
 preparation. Never, it appeared, in the long 
 history of mankind was there such a fearful 
 alternative, never a louder call to duty. America, 
 without the hope of profit, with no mean or 
 hidden purpose, must herself fight to maintain 
 the principles of civilization and for the hope of 
 lasting peace and propriety between nations. 
 
 Many of us came to realize the incredible fact 
 that Germany menaced our safety, that if the 
 war lords of Prussia were successful we were in 
 actual and immediate danger. I know nothing
 
 24 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 more magnificent and imperial in its effrontery 
 than the remark made by the Kaiser to the 
 American Ambassador that he would stand no 
 more nonsense from America after this war ! 
 Still, we could scarcely credit what appears to 
 be the truth, that — if I may attribute to the 
 Kaiser the offensive words of Napoleon — ^America 
 was within the scope of his policy. Possibly it 
 was shameful in us to wait and to rely on the 
 Allied Powers when we began to feel that their 
 defeat imperilled our own safety. But something 
 more than fear was needed to force us into the 
 fight ; not until the issues were clear to the 
 nations of the world, not until there was hope for 
 a constructive peace, not till we heard the call of 
 humanity, were we prepared to fling in our 
 power and resources. 
 
 Doubtless our final entrance into the conflict 
 was brought about by cumulative irritation at 
 German methods and policies. Our conviction 
 of their unworthiness grew gradually day by day. 
 This conviction was the result of experience, of 
 having actually lived through a great crisis. 
 Among these irritations, which opened our eyes 
 and hardened our hearts, none was more powerful 
 than the machinations of the German spies. 
 We were more than irritated, we were enlightened ; 
 we discovered what Weltpolitik and Realpolitik 
 really were — German espionage helped us to 
 grasp the nature of a principle which is essentially 
 criminal and which, if it continues, must make 
 decent international relationships quite impossible.
 
 AMERICA'S ENTRY INTO THE WAR 25 
 
 And so this fact began to stand out strongly : 
 Democracy cannot survive in an atmosphere of 
 indecent intrigue — Democracy is comparatively 
 helpless in a game of secret skill and of stealthy 
 manipulation. 
 
 America came to see, by April 191 7, that she 
 must enter the struggle, and sacrifice, if need be, 
 all but honour to put doM^n arrogant militarism 
 and strutting autocracy, the remnants of an 
 outworn practice of life and mode of thought. 
 The world was too small to contain two funda- 
 mentally hostile principles of life. It took the 
 devastation of this horrible calamity, the death of 
 millions, the crippling of tens of millions, the 
 semi-starvation of a continent, the drowning of 
 our own people, the slimy intrigue in our own 
 nation, the practice of studied cruelty in Belgium 
 and Poland — it needed all this to open our blind 
 eyes ; but at last we saw. There was no use in 
 arguing about it ; the world was too small, too 
 organically united ; it could not encompass two 
 warring principles of life — ^warring, that is to say, 
 and deadly in their antagonisms even in times of 
 so-called peace ; for the deadliest of enemies are 
 ideas and ideals that in, of, and through them- 
 selves lead to differing goals. There was no use 
 in talking about it ; the world cannot perma- 
 nently exist or longer live half slave and half 
 free. We have to make the world safe for 
 Democracy. 
 
 President Wilson has not, as some people think, 
 asserted that Prussia must adopt a Democratic
 
 26 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 Government. He has simply said that German 
 rulers cannot be trusted ; any arrangement with 
 them for peace, unbacked by the people of 
 Germany, would be a bauble. Does anybody 
 doubt that the German Government is not 
 trusted ? The question is not whether it ought 
 to be trusted ; as to that, some ignorant person 
 might break into an argument. The question is 
 not whether we may ultimately have to sign a 
 peace with the gilded and brazen rulers of 
 Germany ; on that point sorne faint-hearted 
 person might start a discussion. The question 
 is : Does anybody trust the Government ? The 
 President has also pointed out that a peace 
 which is really vital must be a peace of peoples. 
 Anybody doubting that has not got very far into 
 the meaning of this horrible catastrophe. We 
 are not, let us hope, giving up the lives of our 
 boys for a " peace " hanging on the shaky word 
 of a Berlin Government. And nothing but the 
 righteous sense and serene judgment of everyday 
 people who have seen the light and love the 
 sunshine of friendliness — nothing else can give us 
 hope for humanity. 
 
 And this leads me to say, what you well know, 
 that the whole fate of Democracy is involved in 
 this war, and that out of it, to use the words of 
 Lincoln, must come a new birth of freedom. It 
 is not merely that the hosts of Germany have 
 turned under regal leadership against the demo- 
 cratic nations of the West and hoped to crush 
 them by weight of arms and barbaric fury. It
 
 AMERICA'S ENTRY INTO THE WAR 27 
 
 is not alone our territorial integrity or even our 
 forms of government which are imperilled ; the 
 spirit and breath of open-minded, cheerful, 
 hopeful and trustful democracy are in danger. 
 Democracy is and must be sociable, friendly, 
 and helpful, or it belies its own character and 
 denies its own philosophy. It cannot breathe 
 the fetid air of intrigue, espionage, and hidden 
 malice. Democracy is built on faith, faith in 
 the elementary rectitude, the substantial validity, 
 of human life and purposes. If it is not trustful 
 and open-hearted and hopeful, it falsifies its own 
 being. The time has come when once for all 
 it must be decided on which philosophy of life 
 humanity will rest. 
 
 In all its aspects Democracy is purely a matter 
 of human relations. The time was when we 
 thought only of individual freedom or of social 
 and political equality. But by processes of natural 
 inevitable growth we have passed on to a fuller 
 realization of democratic obligation. Democracy 
 involves helpfulness and friendly companionship ; 
 there can be no such thing as an insulated demo- 
 cratic individual, and there can be no such thing 
 as an insulated democratic nation ; the spirit of 
 companionableness and co-operation must express 
 itself in international relations and manifest 
 itself in ordinary intercourse between govern- 
 ments and peoples. That we shall always act in 
 .highest accord with the essential ideals of this 
 philosophy of life one dare not prophesy ; but 
 such, I maintain, is the logical and necessary
 
 28 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 product of a developing spirit. Democracy Is In 
 its essence essentially human, not merely political 
 or governmental ; and the inmost significance of 
 this struggle consists in this : we are menaced by 
 a force and a philosophy hideously at variance 
 with the primary and heartfelt instincts of 
 democratic life. This very force had compelled 
 Democracy to expand itself beyond the confines 
 of national boundaries, and to demand the recog- 
 nition of its principles as the foundation of peace 
 and of a hopeful, progressive, human, and humane 
 world-order. 
 
 The passing years have shown, then, that self- 
 contained, purely national democracy is not 
 enough. We cannot be inwardly democratic, 
 outwardly autocratic. Neither can we practise 
 the principles of autocracy in our relations with 
 other nations without vitiating the principles of 
 Democracy. We must, therefore, not be compelled 
 by the autocrats of other nations to accept the prac- 
 tices of force and deceit in international relations. 
 We may not demand that Prussia adopt the forms 
 of popular government — though these must come 
 to her, unless she stand aside unaffected by the 
 currents of modern civilization ; but we can and 
 will demand that she abide by the code of demo- 
 cratic fair-play and fair-mindedness. If she is 
 unable or unwilling to think as the outside world 
 is thinking, she must be made incompetent. 
 The distinguished gentleman who so kindly 
 introduced me this evening used these words 
 some months ago : " Prussia must be powerless
 
 AMERICA'S ENTRY INTO THE WAR 29 
 
 or free." It would be sheerest folly now not to 
 see the whole fact clearly. The world cannot 
 remain half free and half Prussian ; and the 
 essential ethics of Democracy must be boldly 
 adopted as the guiding principle of international 
 intercourse and human progress. Those ethical 
 principles, we may remind ourselves again, are 
 not so much intellectual as spiritual, not so much 
 political as human and social — they rest on faith, 
 on responsibility, on helpfulness, and companion- 
 able co-operation. 
 
 That this war will bring in a revivified and 
 enlarged sense of social obligation and develop 
 within each of the nations now fighting for 
 democratic ideals a new appreciation of duties as 
 well as rights, we now see is inevitable ; but it 
 must do more than this. It must extend those 
 ideals beyond the limits of individual conduct or 
 internal policy. Unless these ideas permeate 
 the philosophy of the world, domestic democracy 
 is endangered. Even for our own salvation we 
 must strive, then, for International Democracy — 
 I mean, of course, tolerance, frankness, forbear- 
 ance, open-mindedness, faith, and companionship. 
 
 That, you will say, is a big programme. Well, 
 this is a big war. It will bring big, inconceivably 
 big, psychological results. A new world is before 
 us. To some extent we can make it what we 
 will ; and what it will be depends, so far as 
 conscious effort can bring things to pass, on the 
 purpose and desire of the English-speaking 
 peoples. We must not fail ; we simply must not
 
 30 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 fail. Let us not lose ourselves, our inherent 
 character, and let us highly resolve to carry 
 forward into the days of peace that feeling of 
 mutual respect, that sense of friendly co-operation 
 by which we are now possessed. This we must 
 do for our own welfare and for the welfare of the 
 outside world.
 
 BRITISH AND AMERICAN RELATIONS 
 
 I 
 
 On the second anniversary of the Battle of the 
 Marne, M. Ribot, the French Premier, in an 
 eloquent address, used these words : " France 
 joins with the civilized world in revindicating 
 guarantees for a peace which will not be a mere 
 truce, but a lasting concord founded upon Right. 
 Where can these guarantees be found ? It is 
 for the German people to realize that it rests 
 with them to supply them by throwing off their 
 yoke of military despotism, which, besides being 
 a heavy burden for themselves, is also a danger to 
 the rest of the world. If they refuse to become 
 a peaceful democracy, it will be their economic 
 interests that will run the risk of being attacked 
 through the league of common defence that the 
 nations will find themselves forced to organize 
 against them. They who wish to inflict upon the 
 world the constant menace of an aggression cannot 
 complain that the world should seek to protect 
 itself by all the means at its disposal. A nation 
 cannot isolate herself without incurring mortal 
 risks, and it is condemning one's self to isolation 
 to disturb the world in its needs for peace, which 
 will become still more imperious after such a war." 
 
 31
 
 32 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 The nation that sets itself up in isolation not 
 only menaces the peace of the world, and menaces 
 it a thousandfold if it be militant and sullen, but 
 it seeks to shut itself off from the permeating 
 forces of civiHzation. That fundamentally was 
 Germany's greatest sin. Ensconced behind a 
 wall of assumed superiority, nourishing tenderly 
 her own pecuHar Kultur, believing with a puerile 
 simphcity that she alone, the favourite or only 
 child of the All-Highest, was possessed of the 
 secrets of life, worshipping with actual fanaticism 
 the State which was in possession of unalloyed 
 sovereignty, she fell upon the outside nations 
 with a savage ferocity which still amazes the 
 world. Sooner or later she must be brought to 
 her senses ; how, we do not clearly know, though 
 we have consecrated our lives and our property 
 to the task of beating down and overwhelming the 
 armed might with which she seeks to defend her 
 uncivilizing and monstrous pretensions. To this 
 end we give more than ourselves ; we give our- 
 sons ; we are prepared to sacrifice all but our 
 honour. 
 
 This may seem an unexpected introduction to a 
 talk on America and Britain, but it is not inappro- 
 priate ; for my main theme is international duty 
 rather that national rights. Patriotism is not 
 enough ; if it were the sum of the virtues Germany, 
 the fanatical Fatherland bowing down and offering 
 up human sacrifices on the altar of Hohenzollern 
 inerrancy, would be the most virtuous State alive. 
 If the war teaches anything, it teaches that human
 
 RELATIONS 33 
 
 Ity is greater than narrow-minded patriotism. 
 Do not misunderstand me : I have not said that 
 patriotism is not good ; a man must love his 
 country, his town, and his own fireside, or he is 
 less than human. I only say that the nation 
 setting up its own gilded image for worship has 
 transmuted a virtue into a vice and menaces 
 civilization. 
 
 My purpose to-day is to take up for considera- 
 tion the historical relationships between Britain 
 and America. I shall not attempt to go into 
 details, but only to present a few elementary 
 things. We shall have to glance at some of the 
 troubles and misunderstandings of the past ; but 
 these will, I think, disclose the basis for good under- 
 standing now and in the future ; for though 
 America broke away from Britain in the eighteenth 
 century, and though in the next century there 
 were years of hositility and bitterness, the funda- 
 mental fact is the development of similarities, 
 and a growing appreciation of identity of interests 
 because of identity of basic political and social 
 principles. In discussing these historical relation- 
 ships, we shall have to notice the errors of Britain, 
 and perhaps I shall seem to you to over-emphasize 
 them. If I do so, it will be because I am unwilling, 
 by glancing over the shortcomings and the faults 
 of the past, to weaken my plea for good under- 
 standing now and in the future. Fortunately 
 Britain has never been foolishly sensitive. The 
 average man of these islands, with an admirable 
 pride in his fatherland, has always unsparingly
 
 34 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 criticized its conduct. It is not necessary to go 
 to histories written in Deutschland, to find a 
 recital of Britain's errors. If one wishes to find, 
 for example, a magnanimous and generous story 
 of the American cause in the War of Independence 
 and an almost unqualified condemnation of British 
 wrong-headedness, let him go to Trevelyan's 
 American Revolution and not to any recent work 
 by an American writer. The American historian, 
 more keenly aware, it seems, of the difficulties 
 of imperial administration than is the Englishman 
 himself, now writes with tolerant sympathy, 
 almost defensively, of those measures of imperial 
 order which culminated in our cutting the apron- 
 strings which had tied us to an indulgent but 
 bungling mother country. We talk, you and I, 
 of our coming together in inteUigent appreciation 
 of the past ; if we do not take care we shall pass 
 each other in the dark ; it would be an amusing 
 product of our anxiety to be fair, if American 
 scholars should in the end upbraid Englishmen 
 because the Englishmen would not admit the 
 difficulty, perhaps one might say the impossibility, 
 of managing from Westminster and holding 
 permanently in the empire some milHons of self- 
 dependent and self-willed people.-^ 
 
 ^ An illustration of this amusing contradiction appeared in 
 a brief discussion at the Royal Historical Society, in which I 
 said that the American Revolution and the break-up Qf the 
 old empire occurred because the British Parliament was unable 
 or unwilling to accept certain principles in the make-up of the 
 empire ; " but after all," I added, " if the break had not 
 come on that account, it is not unlikely it would have come
 
 RELATIONS 35 
 
 So loathsome do I consider the boastful exuber- 
 ance of Teutonic patriotism that I almost shrink 
 from the task of setting forth what I believe to 
 be the mission and the character of America, and 
 I hesitate to speak of the obligations and mutual 
 responsibilities of the English-speaking peoples, 
 lest I appear to distort the truth and to place 
 these two nations on some peak of isolated 
 grandeur, arrogating to themselves the wisdom, 
 culture, and conscience of the world. But the 
 simple fact is that a great burden has been thrust 
 upon us ; and it is now our duty, acting harmo- 
 niously together, to carry the world through the 
 present misery and onward to better things. 
 With no assumption of omniscience or perfection, 
 we must reach out beyond ourselves and extend 
 
 for some other reason. Governing people like the American 
 colonists, three thousand miles away from the seat of govern- 
 ment, brought up almost impossible tastes of administration." 
 An English gentleman present quite disagreed with me, saying 
 that there was, in his opinion, no reason in the world why 
 the empire should not have remained unshaken, if the Govern- 
 ment had had a little sense. I mention this difference of 
 opinion, not to indicate that one of us was right and the other 
 wrong, but to show how there may be differences due possibly 
 to excessive desire to be fair-minded. Of course, such an 
 argument, dealing with what might have been, is fruitless at 
 the best ; for what might have happened, did not happen ; 
 and history deals with realities and not suppositions. The 
 historical fact is that Great Britain was then incapable of 
 managing wisely colonies which she had allowed to develop 
 naturally, and in which the principles of English freedom had 
 been strengthened by the opportunities of unfettered life on 
 a new continent.
 
 36 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 the spirit of Democracy as the basis of world- 
 organization and progress. As I sought to point 
 out in vny last lecture, this duty has been thrust 
 upon us, and we have found that democratic 
 institutions, that are really based on the 
 philosophy of democratic life, are not safe within 
 national boundaries, as long as aggressive mili- 
 tarism, with the natural accompaniments of 
 stealth and intrigue, menaces the world. The 
 essence of Democracy is social relationship ; its 
 soul is friendliness, its heart is companionship. 
 To promote this spirit in the world is primarily 
 the task of the two nations having the surest basis 
 for friendly understanding and sympathy, two 
 nations using the same language, sprung from the 
 same root of political principle and effort, heirs 
 (though some of our citizens may have been born 
 in Bohemia and Poland or Greece) of John Eliot 
 and Pym and Hampden and Sydney and John 
 Milton. It is our task to work together for jus- 
 tice and reason in the world about us. Funda- 
 mental principles of liberty, taking their rise in 
 Britain, have had tremendous influence on the 
 world : neither the soldiers of Cromwell's army 
 when they drew up the " Agreement of the 
 People," nor John Milton when he wrote the 
 Areopagitica, acted and wrote, as the passing 
 years have shown, for Britain alone ; and now the 
 time has come for both nations, that owe so 
 much to the courageous defenders of liberty, to 
 carry on the struggle openly and boldly for a 
 wider and deeper application of the ethics of 
 freedom.
 
 RELATIONS 37 
 
 We in America feel, and must feel more fully 
 still, the necessity of coming into intimate and 
 intelligent friendliness with the British people. 
 I am speaking now not of diplomatic alliances or 
 of any form of political arrangement. Though, 
 of course, the American people must develop 
 their own life, and expand and clarify their own 
 character, we should be anxious to learn from 
 others, and above all to feel sympathy with the 
 mind and purposes of the masses of the British 
 people, whose outlook on the world and whose 
 sense of moral obligation are, I believe, essentially 
 in harmony with our own. All formalities of poli- 
 tical co-operation aside, intelligent friendliness # 
 should be within the range of the possible ; any- 
 thing less leads to a dark and forbidding world. 
 
 In speaking of such ill-feeling, or such absence 
 of sympathy — to speak gently — as Americans 
 have entertained toward Britain, it is customary 
 to speak as if it were all due to the remembrance 
 of the American Revolution. Doubtless the 
 story of the Revolution, the war that established 
 American independence, occupies in the mind of 
 the average American a space and a prominence 
 that an Englishman can scarcely appreciate ; you 
 have had so many wars, so many defeats and 
 victories ; you have made so many mistakes and 
 done so much deserving the admiration of the 
 world, that you find it hard to realize that this 
 war still looms so large and means so much to 
 the American. But it is withal a mistake to 
 attribute American feeling to the Revolution 
 alone ; it is a mistake to neglect nearly a century
 
 38 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 of history after the Revolution and to lose sight 
 of the fact that the Governments of the two 
 nations, though gradually learning to dispose of 
 difficulties in a seemly way, were often engaged 
 in dangerous disputes, and that there were many 
 things besides diplomatic. controversy tending to 
 keep alive in America a certain feeling of opposi- 
 tion or at the best a certain feeling of difference 
 and diversity of interest and sentiment. 
 
 Britain's mistreatment of American commerce 
 during the Napoleonic period is one of the things 
 which has found a lasting lodgment in the mind 
 of the American school-boy. He is apt to forget 
 that Jefferson said that England had become a den 
 of pirates and France a nest of thieves, that Eng- 
 land was fighting, as she is to-day, against ausurper 
 itching for world-domination, whose plans con- 
 templated an empire in every continent of the 
 globe, and that England's so-called piracy was 
 tender and compassionate when compared with 
 the modern variety practised by Germany under 
 the sweet title of " freedom of the seas." 
 
 After the war of 1812 came fifty years and more 
 of unfriendliness, and just now I am willing to 
 place the main burden for that hostihty on Bri- 
 tain. It is a dismal story, a story of arrogance 
 and, in part, carefully nourished ill-will, and it 
 discloses the criminal folly of petty personal 
 animosity. There were breaks in the clouds ; 
 but on the whole I offer no excuse, only stopping 
 to say that any one supposing that America 
 meanwhile walked the primrose path of gentleness
 
 RELATIONS 39 
 
 has no knowledge of the bumptiousness of our 
 days of national adolescence. Britain's career 
 in the world at large during the first sixty years 
 or so of the nineteenth century has its dark and 
 repellent side — the Opium War, the Crimea, and 
 the swagger of Palmerstonian Imperialism cannot 
 be remembered with equanimity, nor can the 
 long policy of protection and friendliness for the 
 unspeakable Turk. 
 
 American democracy during those decades was 
 often crude, boastful and self-satisfied. It often 
 showed itself in its less lovely aspects to foreigners, 
 who in their turn failed to see in our rapidly 
 developing country a pure idealism and a lofty 
 faith which was even then affecting the outside 
 world. American diplomacy was not unskilful ; 
 but the art and courtesy of the diplomatist often 
 suffered from the high-flown speech of the 
 politician, who with a fatal gift of words poured 
 out his periods on the hustings and even on the 
 floor of Congress. That our tone and temper 
 were irritating there can be no doubt ; and one 
 special practice, known commonly as twisting the 
 tail of the British lion, was often used to arouse 
 the enthusiasm of the orator's audience. 
 
 The British traveller who, like Charles Dickens 
 or Mrs. Trollope, lampooned American life for 
 the amusement of his own people, and held up to 
 view the crudities, vulgarities and simplicities of 
 our unsophisticated society, did untold damage. 
 The sharp and unfriendly criticism of British 
 journals also was deeply resented and brought forth
 
 40 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 keen retorts from American writers. This con- 
 stant campaign of journalistic recrimination, 
 which the people of Britain have long ago for- 
 gotten or ignored, kept alive for decades a bitter- 
 ness of feeling which might otherwise have disap- 
 peared or been greatly modified by the passing 
 years. Such English writers as pleased themselves 
 by depicting American shortcomings and follies 
 might have taken a lesson from Harriet Martineau, 
 who summed up the situation truthfully and 
 nobly by saying there is the greatest hope for a 
 people that can cherish high ideals. Though 
 these ideals were often expressed in extravagant 
 and boastful terms, they were real and elemental ; 
 but the literary or articulate classes of Britain 
 would not see them, and indeed did not, I fear, 
 desire to see them. 
 
 No one wishing to understand American history 
 can omit the sentiments of democratic idealism 
 which animated the people from the days of the 
 Revolution to — when ? Well, how shall I answer ? 
 During the last twenty years we have been criti- 
 cizing ourselves unmercifully, looking askance at 
 our Constitution, the oldest and most conservative 
 national constitution in the world, finding fault 
 with our courts, grumbling about our pitiful 
 municipal governments, questioning our capacity 
 to manage the perplexing and pressing problems 
 of social and economic order, envious, in some 
 measure, of the hard, glittering efficiency of Ger- 
 many ; for the first time in our national history we 
 were becoming distrustful of our own superior
 
 RELATIONS 41 
 
 .capacity and our own high destiny, although in 
 reahty we were taking a firmer hold on duty and 
 cleansing ourselves from much of our former error. 
 I have not as yet answered my question as to when 
 this strain of idealism disappeared from American 
 character, but I can now answer. It has not 
 disappeared at all. To-day the land is filled with 
 more than a hatred of German Machtpolitik. 
 The people have not been aroused by fear for 
 themselves, though perhaps they should have 
 been ; they have not been stirred by hope of 
 material profit ; they have not been moved by 
 motives of revenge — I mean, none of these has 
 been the chiefest influence drawing them into 
 the world war. They hate German Machtpolitik, 
 because it is the policy of force ; they detest 
 cruelty because it is cruelty ; they loathe deceit 
 and barbarity, because deceit and barbarity are 
 loathsome. But I believe I am right in declaring 
 that the appeals made by President Wilson to 
 essential sense of right and justice, the demand 
 that the world be freed from dynastic ambitions 
 which are fed by military aggression, the call for 
 the succour of ravished Belgium and martyrized 
 Serbia, the need of saving democracy from the 
 grasp of imperialistic autocracy ; the realization 
 that America owes^a duty not to herself alone, 
 but also to the world — these things have fired 
 the American heart and made us resolve not to 
 lay down the sword till Hohenzollern arrogance 
 shall give way to decency and truth. We have 
 some hold on the belief, some faint hold at least.
 
 42 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 some portion of assured trust, that we are now 
 fulfilling our destiny and doing our duty, that 
 we are really in some degree responsive to the 
 injunction of the American poet : 
 
 " Be thou the guardian of the weak, 
 Of the unfriended, thou the friend. 
 
 No guerdon for thy valour seek, 
 No end beyond the avowed end. 
 
 Wouldst thou thy godlike power preserve, 
 
 Be godlike in thy will to serve." 
 
 I do not wish to speak boastfully : no American 
 that I know is in a boastful mood ; we are not 
 trumpeting our valour or our power. But you 
 will forgive me, I am sure, if my heart is warmed 
 by the belief that America is not false to its own 
 past and to its high convictions. You will forgive 
 me if I am moved by the sight, to use Milton's 
 words,^ of a noble and puissant nation rousing 
 herself to take part with fortitude and courage 
 in this horrible war which has already brought 
 desolation to your firesides, and to take part in 
 it with no thought save that of service. God 
 grant that side by side in suffering and in the 
 elation of victory, we and you may cling fast to 
 those sentiments of justice and rectitude which 
 the world sorely needs if civilization is to survive. 
 
 Omitting for the present any further reference 
 
 ^ " Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation 
 rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her 
 invincible locks ; methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her 
 mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full 
 midday beam."
 
 RELATIONS 43 
 
 to British and American errors during the last 
 century, because I shall need to refer to them 
 again, let us grasp at once a main and elemental 
 fact. Both Britain and America were living ; 
 they were stumbling through experiences and 
 developing character. An historical student re- 
 sents almost with anger the way the laymen often 
 use history ; for it is not history at all. The 
 unhistorical man is too likely to seize upon some 
 incident, to detach it from its environment, and 
 to hurl it as a missile in argument, as if history 
 were but a basket of pebbles snugly fitting the 
 hand. It is true that a nation's character and 
 quality can be discovered by what it does ; there 
 is no other way of discovery. If I wished to tell 
 what kind of a psychosis Germany has to-day, I 
 should say that her hero is that old scamp, 
 Frederick the Great. History, however, does 
 not deal with separated incidents but with life 
 and growth. Nations, perhaps more surely than 
 separate individuals, change in character, in 
 psychological reactions. Nothing can be more 
 humorous than to suppose you can know Britain 
 to-day solely by knowing what she was a hundred 
 and forty years ago. It would probably be safer 
 to say that a boy who " swiped " an apple from 
 a farmer's wagon would surely grow into a bandit. 
 There are, of course, certain traits, qualities and 
 aptitudes of national character that are discovered 
 by tracing the course of its history ; there may pos- 
 sibly be special illuminating incidents ; but the 
 law of history and of life is change and adaptation.
 
 44 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 Even Germany, still ruled by a conception 
 of kingship that came out of the later Middle 
 Ages and by worse than that, has undergone 
 change ; and the world outside her borders has 
 but one prayer to-day, and that is that the expe- 
 riences of this war will bring conversion and 
 regeneration. 
 
 In England there have been for centuries two 
 conflicting forces. There were, it is true, times 
 of almost complete stagnation, but during those 
 times there was a more or less unconscious prepara- 
 tion for the next step forward, a gathering of 
 strength to move on toward a fuller and freer 
 life. I shall not carry you far back into this 
 struggle ; let us begin with the seventeenth 
 century, about the time that Prussia, no bigger 
 than a man's hand, appeared on the horizon 
 and began, with war as its " national industry," 
 that steady policy of aggression which has now 
 drenched Europe in blood. Those were the days 
 of the Great Rebellion in England, when the 
 opponents of the divine right of kings were 
 formulating and putting to practical use the 
 revolutionary philosophy which America in later 
 years used so effectively. If any one would 
 understand the present conflict or our debt to 
 Britain, he must go back to those years, and see 
 what it meant that Sir John Eliot died in the 
 Tower and Hampden gave up his life on Chalgrove 
 Field. Before the end of the century, England's 
 sovereign rested his power on parliamentary 
 authority. In reality power passed to the great
 
 RELATIONS 45 
 
 Whig families ; England was essentially an aristo- 
 cracy and there ensued three-quarters of a century 
 in which there was comparatively little upward 
 movement toward modern democracy. Still Eng- 
 land had a parliament, she had a crude, imperfect 
 and corrupt representative system, and, even if 
 her statesmen and publicists paid only lip service 
 to the principle, they taught and believed that 
 government springs from consent, originates in 
 the people and is bounded in the exercise of its 
 power by human rights and justice. Of the 
 early decades of George III, you know the con- 
 ditions well ; they are brilliantly told in Trevel- 
 yan's Fox, and can be seen face to face in Walpole's 
 letters. Trevelyan tells us that there is no more 
 evidence of Christian religion in Horace Walpole's 
 writings than in those of Pliny the Younger. I 
 have been a somewhat careful reader of Walpole 
 and can support Sir George's statement. It was 
 Voltaire who uttered the famous epigram that 
 there was no more religion in England than the 
 minimum necessary for party purposes ; and we 
 may remember that it has been said that no 
 politician worthy of his craft thought it wise to 
 get along without a clergyman in his train. The 
 sudden access of wealth and power with the defeat 
 of France in Canada and India, the coming in of 
 wealthy planters from the East and West Indies, 
 introduced what Pitt called Asiatic habits of life 
 and threatened to bring in Asiatic principles of 
 politics. 
 
 When the American Revolution came on,
 
 46 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 Britain was ready, or nearly ready, for another 
 move forward ; there were signs of awakening. 
 Vulgar ostentation, corruption in high places, 
 dissipation, venality, low-browed appreciation of 
 national obligations, were not all. In religion, 
 in political economy, in industry, even in poHtics, 
 there are some evidences that a new and better 
 England was coming. For the really great and 
 creative forces of the time were represented by 
 John Wesley, Adam Smith, Arkwright and Har- 
 greave, Edmund Burke, Fox and Pitt. Of course 
 the tide had not clearly turned till fifty years and 
 more after the beginning of our revolutionary era ; 
 but even in its days of social frivolity, Britain's 
 condition was not hopeless. It is a striking fact 
 that Smith's Wealth of Nations was published 
 in the year of the American Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence. It meant in all its reasoning and its 
 ethics the coming in of a new school of thought, 
 the foundation principles of liberal trade on which 
 Britain in the next century was to raise the 
 mighty structure of imperial commerce. The 
 philosophy of Burke, the open-hearted humanism 
 of Fox, the new, free and rational economy of 
 Adam Smith, the inventions of textile machinery 
 by Hargreave and Arkwright — these were the 
 things which were to make over the old-time 
 Britain and to raise her to a new position of 
 usefulness. 
 
 However this may all be, the American Revolu- 
 tion came as a great shock to Britain. The effects 
 of that Revolution and the French Revolution
 
 RELATIONS 47 
 
 are hard to trace. In part, no doubt, influences 
 worked at cross purposes : a new order of political 
 thinking forced itself in, new conceptions of 
 personal worth and freedom affected Britain as 
 they did the Continent ; and still, especially as 
 the result of the excesses of the French Revolution 
 and of the long wars against Napoleon, certain 
 forces of reaction were given sufficient strength to 
 maintain themselves till their grip was loosened 
 by the Reform measure of 1832. Despite these 
 reactionary forces, the fortress of feudalism — I 
 use Goldwin Smith's phrase — began, I believe, 
 during our Revolutionary era to show evidences 
 of weakening. 
 
 Now if we look more carefully at the Revolution 
 itself, the first thing we see, as some wise man has 
 said, is the England of the seventeenth century 
 arising to combat the England of the eighteenth. 
 This is most literally and startlingly true. The 
 English race split asunder in the seventeenth 
 century, not in the eighteenth ; the Revolution 
 broke the political connection. The men that 
 settled the colonies, especially those coming to 
 Massachusetts, carried with them the thinking 
 and the principles of the Great Rebellion of the 
 seventeenth century. And so when Britain in 
 the eighteenth century, under the guidance of a 
 stiffnecked German monarch, and under the sway 
 of a Junker aristocracy, sought to tax America, 
 and to set up the complete and unlimited 
 authority of Parliament, America was prepared to 
 meet her — how ? — by reference to precedents
 
 48 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 and the principles of English liberty, by in- 
 sisting that the doctrines which Britain had 
 produced, and which had grown strong in her 
 self-governing colonies, should be applied in 
 the empire as a whole. This should be fully- 
 noticed, and may I say, to add emphasis to this 
 assertion, that that particular period has been 
 my special field of study for twenty years ? I 
 may be vain if I say that I speak with some 
 authority, but certainly I speak with assurance. 
 The American Revolution is, on the whole, the 
 chief jewel in the imperial diadem of Britain ; it 
 was one of her greatest deeds. It was based on 
 English-born philosophy ; it was waged by 
 colonists who had developed in freedom ; it 
 carried forward to a higher stage, or onward 
 toward maturity, those principles and practices 
 for the foundation of which Englishmen had 
 given their lives. None but English colonies 
 could have made such a fight for independence ; 
 none but Englishmen, who in the new world had 
 had new opportunities for self-realization, could 
 have institutionalized, made over into written 
 legal binding form, those fundamental precepts 
 of individual liberty which had not yet found full 
 expression in Britain itself. 
 
 When I say " none but Engfishmen " could 
 have done so, I am not speaking in terms of race, 
 or theoretically ; I am speaking historically. 
 Where in the eighteenth century could be seen 
 other colonists able to find, in the history and 
 institutions of their mother country, foundations
 
 RELATIONS 49 
 
 for declared principles of self-government ? Who 
 but English colonists could at that time have 
 written those amazingly advanced, conservative, 
 human, clever, determined and wise State-papers 
 that came from the pens of Dickinson, Sam Adams, 
 Jefferson and others of that brilliant Revolutionary 
 group ? But — if I must cling closely to historical 
 facts and not indulge in " coulds " and " mights " 
 — it is sufficient to say, no others did do it ; and 
 that is enough. No one but Englishmen estab- 
 lished American Independence, and this they did 
 on the basis of English history. This they did 
 possibly because of native racial capacity, and 
 certainly because they had been allowed self- 
 development. You would not turn — would 
 you ? — to the France of Louis XV, to the 
 Prussia of that grim old robber Frederick, or to 
 any principality of the kings and princelings of 
 autocratic Germany, to decadent old Spain, to 
 distracted Italy, or to half-barbaric Russia under 
 Catherine II, of whom the less is said the better. 
 I have been speaking of principles of individual 
 liberty, and the practice of representation as a 
 protection of liberty — of the institutions and the 
 ideals which Englishmen in America carried out 
 beyond the stage to which England herself had 
 at that time developed them. But there was 
 more than that. Turn where we may, we are 
 struck, if we study carefully : first, by the remark- 
 able political astuteness of the American English- 
 men of the eighteenth century, the remarkable 
 cleverness with which they used principles and 
 
 E
 
 50 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 made them real in working institutions ; and 
 second, by the fact that in an astonishingly large 
 part of their work they only adapted, only shaped, 
 fitted and adjusted institutions, principles and 
 practices which had their home in Britain. We 
 have in America several qualities and several 
 political institutions or modes of action which we 
 consider peculiarly American, or, if we admit 
 that some of them are no longer peculiar to us 
 because they have reached out over the globe, 
 we think of them as American creations. The 
 qualities I have in mind are in large degree due 
 to life on a free, wide open continent ; socially, 
 industrially, intellectually, America is the child of 
 a spacious continent. The institutions, or the 
 forms of political action, are the fixed written 
 constitutions, the limited government, the power 
 and independence of the courts, and the general 
 system of federal order. By this last I mean the 
 general structure of the United States as a whole 
 — a body of states, acting side by side, each with 
 its quota of independent authority, and, acting 
 co-ordinately with them, a central government 
 charged w^ith duties of a broader scope but of 
 specific character. Whence came these institu- 
 tions, these mechanisms, these forms of political 
 action, these habits of political thought ? Largely 
 from Britain. Indeed, wherever you dig — I 
 shall probably not exaggerate — wherever you 
 really dig down into things to understand them 
 by finding their origin, you will be almost sure 
 to find two things — our two parents, the " fron-
 
 RELATIONS 51 
 
 tier " and the old British Empire. I spent several 
 years in studying just one institutional principle 
 that we think peculiarly our own, the right of a 
 court to declare a law unconstitutional, a principle 
 England does not have. In making this study 
 I had not gone far before I found myself in the 
 philosophy of the American Revolution ; I found 
 the American of that time making use of the 
 philosophy and the judicial dicta of the British 
 seventeenth century ; I became familiar with 
 Coke and Hobart and Pym and the soldiers of 
 Cromwell's army, with the Levellers of the 
 middle seventeenth century, with Harrington 
 and Sydney and Locke ; I was examining, too, the 
 structure and the operations of the old colonial 
 empire. I discovered, in other words, that even 
 that institution could be understood only by 
 a study of English and British imperial history. 
 
 I have studied and examined for years the 
 principles on which rest our federal structure : 
 i. e. that compounded, that multiple state, we 
 call the United States. Whence came it ? Why 
 came it ? The form has now spread over the 
 world. Switzerland, Germany, Mexico, most of 
 South America, Canada, Australia, are now 
 federal states. Where did this peculiarly useful 
 and viable form of imperial order come from ? 
 From the old British Empire. And the tragedy 
 of the American Revolution, or the comedy of 
 the whole thing is that, when the Americans 
 claimed the advantages of federalism in the decade 
 of discussion between 1765 and 1775 — ^when they
 
 52 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 claimed, that is to say, that each colony, like one 
 of our present states in the nation, had an inde- 
 feasible right to its own quota of free action, the 
 Englishmen of Parliament could not see that 
 the empire was already federal, already multiple, 
 already non-unitary. And so we broke away and 
 institutionalized, made over into our own legally 
 based institutions, the structure and the spirit 
 of the old empire which Britain had allowed to 
 develop in freedom in America. 
 
 There is something inspiring and almost start- 
 ling in the unerring way in which one's researches 
 carry him back to British and especially to imperial 
 history. Moreover, when we study British im- 
 perial history, we are struck by the significance 
 of the War of American Independence. As we 
 look out on the world to-day we see two great 
 political bodies — I hesitate to call them empires, 
 since the word commonly connotes imperiaHstic 
 ambition and supporting militarism ; those bodies 
 are the British Empire and the United States of 
 America, and both are the products of British 
 history. One of them, the American, is founded 
 totally in its length and breadth (unless, by acquir- 
 ing dependencies from Spain after the war of 
 1898, a change was wrought in some particulars) 
 on law, on a legal scheme of empire, on the 
 Constitution of the United States. The other 
 is founded on opportunism and on opportunity, 
 on the ethics of the philosopher-statesman Burke. 
 For Burke, the friend of America, and the prophet 
 of successful British imperialism, poured out
 
 RELATIONS 53 
 
 floods of captivating eloquence in behalf of free- 
 dom as the soul of successful and honourable ex- 
 pansion and dominion. Freedom was itself force ; 
 not military coercion, not even legal dictation 
 when free communities were to be held to duty 
 — not these, but freedom, constituted compulsion. 
 How have the passing decades given the proof ! 
 " The sons of England," Burke exclaimed, " wor- 
 ship freedom. . . . The more they multiply the 
 more friends you will have ; the more ardently 
 they love liberty, the more perfect will be their 
 obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere. 
 It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may 
 have it from Spain, they may have it from 
 Prussia. But freedom they can have only from 
 you." 
 
 The thoughtless leaders of British society, in 
 the eighteenth century, busy as they were with 
 horses and cards and dice, were not thrilled by 
 the eloquence of the prophet. Not till the 
 trying days of August 1914 did Britain realize 
 that the ethics of Burke, which little by little had 
 permeated and mastered the principles, plans, 
 and practices of her empire, had made for her a 
 dominion that was stronger than the steel of 
 Roman or Teutonic workmanship — not till 191 4, 
 when everywhere, in the woods of Western Canada, 
 in Australia, in New Zealand, in forgotten places 
 of the globe where Enghshmen toiled, young men 
 sprang to arms unsummoned, ready to give their 
 lives for an idea, to sacrifice all for an affection. 
 After all, that is the outstanding lesson of the
 
 54 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 war : freedom is not disintegration, freedom is 
 not dissipation of duty ; freedom is the cement 
 of empire as of society. Of course, it was all 
 dramatically brought on, pathetically, tragically 
 brought on to the world's stage that we might 
 behold it — those boys from the South Sea gasping 
 with thirst and dying by thousands at GaUipoH, 
 and the brave young Canadians at Ypres suffo- 
 cating with poisonous gases, still holding on and 
 giving a new and fresh glory to ghastly and devilish 
 warfare. And there was South Africa, a self-con- 
 taining commonwealth, on which the lavish hand 
 of Britain had bestowed complete freedom after 
 the defeat of the Boer, now freely standing by, 
 won by generosity in a decade or two from 
 enmity and suspicion to loyalty and readiness to 
 die for the ideals of the empire. 
 
 That is the outstanding lesson of the war, and 
 the horrible tragedy of it is Germany, still cherish- 
 ing the belief in brutal compulsion, still cherishing 
 conquest, still believing that men can be terror- 
 ized and beaten into humility and service. This, 
 I say, is the outstanding lesson of the war. Again 
 it is Democracy over against Autocracy. There 
 are many philosophical grounds for faith in 
 Democracy, but among them the chief is this : 
 that self-compulsion, self-control, the unforced 
 acceptance of duty, constitute the essence of 
 social miorality. 
 
 Therefore, when we find, in a vast empire 
 reaching around the world, millions of men and 
 women freely answering jhe call to duty ; freely
 
 RELATIONS * 55 
 
 giving up their property and their Hves because 
 they ought to and want to, not because they 
 have to ; when we see a great empire relying for 
 its Hfe on the self-imposed obligation of far-away 
 peoples, — we have new faith and new hope, and 
 we realize that under the most critical test, under 
 the most searching test imaginable, self-compul- 
 sion has demonstrated its value and its practical 
 strength. Possibly by superior mandate, by 
 brute force, by that all-favoured thing called 
 efficiency, you can obtain more symmetry, better 
 order, less constant petty annoyances ; but if the 
 last fifty years and the last four years have not 
 given you new faith in the essentially ethical and 
 essentially elevating effect of individual self-con- 
 trol and democratic management as over against 
 external and superior compulsion, this world has 
 few interests for you and no prospect of consola- 
 tion. If the orgy of the Germans in Belgium, 
 the tragic history of Alsace and Lorraine, the 
 martyrdom of Poland under the heel of a looting 
 army, the readiness of a great people to believe 
 what they are told in a fateful moment of the 
 world's history, their incapacity to make their 
 wills felt if they have any, do not move you to 
 put up patiently with the uneasy, restless, self- 
 assertive strivings of Democracy, there's no com- 
 fortable home for you save in a Wohnung on the 
 Friedrichstrasse, where you can sit by the win- 
 dow and read on the opposite wall the pleasant 
 command, Verhoten. 
 
 \
 
 BRITISH AND AMERICAN RELATIONS 
 
 II 
 
 The concluding statements of the last lecture 
 may seem too far away from American and British 
 relations ; and too far away from the American 
 Revolution, from which I digressed to consider 
 the nature of the two great empires — shall I 
 call them ? — of British origin. But the cry is 
 not so far ; for the American Revolution — which 
 was a British Revolution — was, as I have said, 
 itself a creative incident in the development of 
 British Liberalism. And, in the decades of the 
 nineteenth century, one fact, one simple but 
 momentous fact, stood out supremely before the 
 world and before Britain : America actually 
 was making a success of Democracy. The prin- 
 ciples of the Revolution, moreover, reacted on 
 the whole of Europe, although the way in which 
 its fullest effect in Germany was stamped out 
 under the heel of Bismarck sixty years ago is a 
 pathetic and dismal story. Do you suppose it 
 is all just an accident that America, though 
 loathing war, has finally cast in its lot with the 
 democracies of Western Europe and has shown, 
 with a fervour which surprises ourselves, a whole- 
 hearted detestation of military conquest and 
 
 56
 
 RELATIONS 57 
 
 militaristic brutality ? Does this seem accidental, 
 or does our delay in entering the contest now 
 seem due, first, to the need of recovering from 
 amazement ; second, the need of perceiving the 
 essential danger to Democracy ; third, the need 
 of keen and sure perception of all the implications 
 of the conflict ? 
 
 There are scores of other things which we 
 ought to consider if we view this whole situation 
 aright. We must be content now with a few of 
 them. Let us notice first the fact — the simple 
 but all-powerful fact — that, for just about one 
 hundred years, England has been moving on 
 slowly, sometimes painfully, toward Liberalism. 
 This is a simple statement ; but it is often entirely 
 lost sight of. Most of us have not had the time 
 or the inclination to study the history of the last 
 century. Therefore, I wish to emphasize what 
 is so pre-eminently plain in that history. The 
 plainest thing is the unintermittent contest, at 
 times an open struggle, between the old forces of 
 privilege and the forces of individual and social 
 right. Step by step Democracy, or LiberaHsm, 
 won — the expansion of the suffrage in 1832, 1867, 
 1884; the repeal of the Corn Laws which pro- 
 tected the landowner and burdened the workman ; 
 the series of Acts which little by little gave the 
 working-classes new life and opportunity ; the 
 growth of a wider, wiser and deeper faith in 
 the great body of men, a faith which was much 
 more valuable than mere legislation, for it filled 
 institutions with new spirit and reached out to
 
 58 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 shape and revivify the whole imperial structure. 
 The culmination of this movement toward Demo- 
 cracy is found in the series of democratic Acts 
 of the early twentieth century and England's 
 entry into this war, in which' she frankly defends 
 the right of people to live their own lives without 
 dictation, in which she frankly and with tre- 
 mendous spiritual enthusiasm stands forth as the 
 protector of popular institutions against military 
 supervision and swaggering officialism. 
 
 When we speak of the close resemblance of 
 British to American institutions and principles, 
 we are sometimes reminded, that Britain has a 
 titled aristocracy and we have not ; and our 
 political habits of mind make it seem strange to 
 us that certain men should have rights and duties 
 as members of the House of Lords, a position 
 which they obtain by birth and not by effort or 
 by the system of politics which makes American 
 senators. To discuss the propriety or the im- 
 propriety of an established aristocracy would, on 
 such an occasion as this, be a gross impertinence ; 
 and I must content myself with saying that 
 there is, I believe, as strong a faith in democratic 
 opinion and as much force in public sentiment in 
 Britain as in the United States. Indeed, when 
 I see the array of talent, of intellectual brilhancy 
 and administrative capacity that openly in Britain 
 preaches and practises the doctrines of Liberalism 
 — I mean which frankly and fairly believes that the 
 masses of men must be trusted, and that their 
 judgments, though not unerring, are the surest
 
 RELATIONS 59 
 
 and safest guides to human betterment — when 
 I see the stern determination of Britain and her 
 readiness to sacrifice her hfe for the maintenance of 
 Democracy in the world : I feel that comparisons 
 of formal institutions are at least, for the present, 
 odious. 
 
 In ourTiew of British history in the last hundred 
 years, let us briefly consider a few other things. 
 Britain during these years has been in Europe as 
 a whole a force making for Liberalism beyond its 
 own borders. I know there are dark spots in 
 British history during that time ; I know there 
 were many occasions when her foreign policies 
 were shaped by crude materialistic needs of her 
 own empire ; I know too, that, when I make 
 this charge, I almost repent my making it, because 
 the fact is pre-eminently growth from the old 
 materialistic imperialism toward human leadership 
 and obligation. But if we look at any single 
 liberal movement on the continent of Europe, 
 from 1820 to 1914, what do we find? Well, 
 we find in most of them Britain's foreign policy 
 and her domestic spirit in sympathy with demo- 
 cratic development ; we find the nations of Europe 
 as they advanced away from autocracy imitating 
 English institutions ; we find the wide acceptance 
 of the principle of ministerial responsibility, and 
 Germany the only nation of importance that 
 has not accepted the practice, except where the 
 American system of presidential government has 
 been adopted. Save America, no other country 
 was so much an inspiration to the restless and
 
 6o AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 hopeless populace of the Continent during the 
 half-century between the death of George III 
 and the unification of Italy. 
 
 Suppose one should ask the struggling leaders 
 of democratic purpose on the Continent during 
 those fateful years when Greece obtained her 
 independence, when country after country re- 
 ceived written constitutions, when Italy threw 
 off the odious and terrible yoke of Austria, when 
 even German States put on the seemingsof popular 
 government by receiving gifts of constitutions 
 handed down by monarchs — suppose we should 
 ask those leaders where they expected in their 
 contests to discover understanding and popular 
 sympathy. Do you think they turned to Berhn, 
 Vienna and Constantinople ? Did Mazzini and 
 Cavour and Garibaldi think of London or 
 Berlin as a source of hope and consolation ? 
 The simple truth is, that EngHshmen had estab- 
 lished in the seventeenth century the funda- 
 mentals of the principles of free government 
 which the men of Europe craved in the nine- 
 teenth ; the truth is, that EngHshmen nearly 
 three centuries ago cast into the muck-heap the 
 whole theory of divine right of kings of which 
 WilHam HohenzoUern still swaggeringly boasts. 
 On the whole, if we put to one side the fact that 
 Britain herself was moving on to a fuller realiza- 
 tion of popular will in government, the glaring 
 truth is simply and concretely that distressed 
 democrats and political refugees fled to London 
 for breath and to gather new courage.
 
 RELATIONS 6i 
 
 Suppose we should select the years from, let 
 us say, 1840 to 1865. Was Britain worse than 
 other nations, or was she better ? I select the 
 years of Palmerstonian flamboyancy, the years of 
 the Opium War and the Crimea, years of blunder 
 and wrongdoing, in which Britain, however, was 
 undergoing a change of soul under the hammering 
 logic of Cobden and the spell of John Bright's 
 lofty eloquence. Compare Britain in the mid- 
 century with Prussia, with France of the Third 
 Empire under Louis the histrionic, with the 
 dreary states of Italy — remembering what Glad- 
 stone said of Naples, that it had raised a denial 
 of God into a principle of government — with 
 Austria practising the policy and creed of Metter- 
 nich and squeezing in her hard hand the peoples 
 of Northern Italy, with America enforcing the 
 Fugitive Slave Law, issuing the Ostend Manifesto, 
 announcing the Dred Scott decision, and ready 
 to enter the mass of Congressional Reconstruction. 
 
 There may be in America still some persons 
 who cherish ill-will against Britain because of 
 her conduct during our Civil War. In part this 
 feeling is a relic of the indignation of the North 
 because of the Alabama trouble, because England 
 sent munitions to the South, because she quickly 
 acknowledged the belHgerency of the Confederacy. 
 But it is high time that we saw these things aright. 
 (i) The only fault in acknowledging belligerency 
 was, if fault at all, in the haste with which it was 
 done. (2) We are in no situation to throw stones 
 at England for exercising the privilege of a neutral
 
 62 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 to ship munitions to a belligerent. (3) While the 
 Alabama matter was trying, Britain paid the 
 damages settled by a court of arbitration. Again, 
 Northern men who lived through the Civil War 
 were tried by England's apparent sympathy with 
 the South, when they had expected that the 
 ofRcial opinion there would support the North. 
 The story is a long and exceedingly interesting 
 one ; can I put the essential truths in a few words ? 
 The suspicion and jealousies produced by old 
 controversies had not died down by i860. For 
 some time past, America had been grasping and 
 apparently imperiahstic, with a more than British 
 imperiahsm, for she had taken Texas and Cali- 
 fornia and other portions of the great west and 
 had looked with more than platonic affection on 
 Central America and Cuba. For all this we 
 can offer excuse or paUiation, but it in part 
 accounts for British feeling toward us. To the 
 average Briton, the whole United States was 
 blackened with slavery ; and, forgetting that his 
 own country during the eighteenth century had 
 revelled in the profits of the slave trade, he looked 
 with undue pride on the really noble part his 
 country had been playing for a generation in 
 the movement toward the liberation of the black. 
 But most fundamental of all, America was not 
 loved, but suspected by the conservative classes, 
 instinctively suspected ; a more or less conscious 
 effort had been made for two generations to slur 
 America, which was giving — the governing classes 
 strove to beheve — a lesson to the world in the
 
 RELATIONS 63 
 
 noxious effects of unrestricted democracy. In 
 the light of all these things, it was natural that 
 the British Government, still largely in the hands 
 of a small governing class, should not instantly 
 sympathize with the North. 
 
 But we must go a little further in our study. 
 As we do so, we shall see the American Civil War 
 — like the Revolution — a crisis and a step forward 
 in British history. We generally think of that 
 struggle as ours. It most decidedly was not ours 
 alone. During the earlier years of the war, 
 pressure was brought on the British Government 
 to recognize the Confederacy as an independent 
 nation and even to intervene ; the Government 
 had too much sense. Blind as it may have been, 
 it could not make that serious and gross error, 
 though Gladstone, a member of the Cabinet, in 
 a well-known speech, spoke of the South as a 
 new nation made by Jefferson Davis, and lived 
 to make open humble acknowledgment of his 
 unspeakable and tactless blunder. When once 
 it was clearly seen by the British people that the 
 contest in America was actually one between 
 slavery and free labour, the Government, had it so 
 desired, dared not acknowledge Southern inde- 
 pendence. Those were very trying days for 
 England. The blockade of our Southern ports 
 cut off the supply of cotton for her factories. 
 Men were thrown out of work, thousands and 
 tens of thousands faced starvation, but the clear- 
 eyed cotton operatives instinctively grasped the 
 truth ; suffer as they might, no Government that
 
 64 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 was theirs should be allowed to cast in its lot with 
 a confederacy of states which recognized the right 
 of capital to own labour, of the employer to own 
 the body of the labourer. We now see how much 
 of human destiny lay in the hands of those simple 
 British workmen. Fortunately ere long they 
 saw the principles of pubHc and human faith 
 incarnated in the person of a great American, 
 a rugged homely son of the soil, who was raised 
 by character from poverty and obscurity to the 
 highest position in a democratic republic. To 
 these simple working-men Lincoln wrote with' 
 his own hand, a straightforward, uncondescending, 
 man-to-man letter, acknowledging their distresses 
 and assuring them of his faith in their sense of 
 justice. 
 
 If we must select one cardinal fact, one great 
 illuminating incident in British history and Anglo- 
 American relations, we should select this strangely 
 daring disregard of diplomatic precedent and 
 ritual. We should see the President of thirty 
 milhon people making a direct, frank, simple 
 statement to the people of another nation, a 
 people as yet inadequate participants in their 
 own government. We should point out the fact 
 that Lincoln knew that peace and good under- 
 standing must rest on the sober judgment of 
 common men, and that governmental methods 
 must not corrupt the cordiality of plain human 
 beings whose interests must be in their elements 
 identical. We need not wonder, then, that the 
 men of Britain to-day quote Abraham Lincoln
 
 RELATIONS 65 
 
 more freely than they do their own statesmen ; 
 for whom ought they to quote but Lincoln and 
 Edmund Burke ? And we need not wonder, but 
 admire, when we find the President of the United 
 States to-day concerning himself with the masses 
 of the people of Europe, who can obtain nothing 
 but vitiation of their own lives from the strength- 
 ening of aristocratic militarism and the crushing 
 of neighbouring democracies. 
 
 When did Great Britain become the friend 
 of America ? Its real friendship began when, 
 in August 1867, Parliament passed the second 
 Reform Bill and England became a democracy. 
 It would be difficult probably to over-emphasize 
 the impression made on the mind and spirit of 
 Britain by the death of Lincoln. The tragedy 
 made men stop and ponder ; his life and death 
 shattered at one blow the argument that sagacity 
 in high places of state rested only with men of 
 superior station and of aristocratic tradition. A 
 great democracy had weathered a storm in which 
 certain elements in the governing classes of 
 Europe had expected to see it founder ; mistakes 
 had been made, but democracy had shown 
 staying power, faith, determination and respect 
 for law. The writer in Punch who lampooned 
 Lincoln in the days of distress and trial openly 
 confessed his error — 
 
 *' Yes, he lived to shame me from my sneer, 
 To lame my pencil and confute my pen — 
 To make me own this hind of princes peer, 
 This rail-3plitter a true-born king of men." 
 F 
 
 /
 
 66 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 How can we doubt that this lesson struck home 
 to the milHons and shook to the base that old 
 doctrine which England, free as she was, had not 
 as yet discarded, that men of a restricted class 
 must hold in their hands the government of a 
 nation. 
 
 Thus far I have rapidly presented a few 
 elementary facts. By strict adherence to history 
 I have sought to show how Britain has gradually 
 become democratic, like the states that were 
 once her colonies. To-day, no people see more 
 clearly than the British people, that this war 
 is not only a democratic, but a democratizing 
 war, a war which must, it seems, unless arrogant 
 Germany prevail (as prevail she must not and 
 cannot), bring into working relations the people 
 of many nations, and build peace and progress 
 on the essential everyday needs and impulses 
 of the plain people. Unless we Americans are 
 false to our history and false to what we suppose 
 we are, surely there is nothing strange but only 
 everything inevitable in our standing by the 
 side of Great Britain, the mother of modern 
 constitutional liberty. 
 
 Now, what of the future ? Dare one venture 
 to look ahead ? This war must democratize 
 the political world, though it would be folly to 
 expect either complete and immediate alteration 
 in foreign affairs, or complete internal peace. 
 There are to be difficult tests of industrial, social, 
 and political readjustment. The effects of the 
 war must be far-reaching. The war now encircles
 
 RELATIONS (>^ 
 
 the globe ; no group of people is so remote 
 that it has not been furnished with the ideals of 
 democracy and of militaristic imperialism. Hun- 
 dreds of millions of men have seen and heard and 
 thought. To some men, it is true, the war 
 appears to have taught only that we must prepare 
 for another ; to some men the chief lesson seems 
 to be that we must buckle on our industrial armour 
 to meet the organized industry of other nations. 
 They look forward to superorganized, politically 
 fostered, and governmentally supervised industrial 
 competition between great peoples, not seeing 
 that Germany's greed under governmental super- 
 vision brought on this terrible agony of war : not 
 seeing that peace and friendliness between nations 
 is almost inconceivable under a regime which 
 Germany's commercial policies so adequately 
 presented to the world : not seeing even that the 
 forces of modern society for fifty years have really, 
 in spite of certain evidences of rampant national- 
 ism, been breaking down the isolation of nations 
 until pubHcists are almost ready to throw over- 
 board the rigid conception of national sovereignty 
 which accepts no exterior superstate compulsion : 
 not seeing that industrial and commercial enter- 
 prise is not, and cannot be, totally national, and 
 that actual unity of interest is an economic 
 necessity and a real fact which is violently dis- 
 regarded by artificial national regulations and 
 interferences. The truth is that pohtical nation- 
 alism to a large extent beHes international reahty, 
 and patriotism is not enough. We may well
 
 68 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 question whether, by a strange revival of currents, 
 we must go to British working-men to gather 
 now what Lincoln called a new birth of freedom ? 
 But surely we all see that peace, prosperity, and 
 progress must depend on the spread and the 
 realization of a deeper and cleaner civilization ; 
 and this we hope for out of the mire and the 
 cruelty of war. Peace and prosperity and pro- 
 gress depend on the people of one nation's 
 knowing and understanding the character and 
 the essential interest of others. 
 
 Let us hope that thinking men see and feel 
 ^hat patriotism is not enough. If after this war 
 one great body of my countrymen or of yours 
 believes persistently in seclusive nationalism, they 
 will be forced by the rest who believe in rational 
 internationalism. I know that international 
 socialism broke down under the impact of mili- 
 tarism and deceit, and I am not advocating 
 socialism ; I am not decrying decent open-minded 
 patriotism. I am saying that patriotism is not 
 enough ; I am saying that we belie the times, we 
 do not see what the man in the workshop feels, 
 we are blind to the humanizing effect of this 
 horribly unhuman war, if we think we can or 
 should proceed to draw a line through the 
 Atlantic Ocean and recognize the political fact 
 of the American Republic and the political facts 
 of British and French States as the only existing 
 realities. My conviction is that if the upper 
 classes, the educated and book-reading classes, 
 cherish the principles of patriotic exclusive
 
 RELATIONS 69 
 
 nationalism and nourish the idea that the State 
 is the only reaHty deserving devotion, they will 
 cut themselves off from the impulses of the masses 
 of working-people who are not devoted to 
 national aggrandizement or national glory, and 
 who take, perhaps, lamentably little pride in 
 purely national grandeur, but have a deep feeling 
 for the necessity of human rights and human 
 progress. As far as internationalism is possible 
 and sound and righteous, I do not like to imagine 
 that it is to be the possession of the unlettered 
 alone, or that those having political authority, 
 education, and economic well-being will also 
 not see the truth. In my judgment, we must 
 look out and beyond and realize that this war 
 has brought millions of men to speak in the terms, 
 not of national aggrandizement, but of human 
 rights.^ 
 
 As I say all this, I pause in fear. The war can 
 raise democracy to a new level ; the war can 
 banish narrow-souled, mole-eyed provincialism ; 
 the war can bring in new life and hope for men 
 who fain would live in friendliness, unthreatened 
 and unafraid, only if Germany is beaten, or if 
 she beats with her own recreated better self the 
 foul spirit of militaristic despotism which menaces 
 
 1 In these days, when the failure of German Socialism to 
 live up to its theories is so clear, there is strong feeling in 
 the minds of many men against internationalism because the 
 word had been the plaything of the Socialists. I hold no 
 brief for socialistic internationalism. I simply maintain that 
 the interests of the world are too nearly one to endure grasping 
 and essentially selfish and self-centred patriotism.
 
 70 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 the world and sears her own soul. And so let 
 us not look too brightly forward ; first let us 
 win on the battle-field our right to live in 
 friendliness in a world of peace. 
 
 There is no complete wisdom in our fondling* 
 our hopes with over-much assurance. There are 
 some things which we might as well look in the 
 face. Half a century ago Prussia cast Austria 
 out of Germany — I was about to say out of 
 Europe — and bade her be content with her job, 
 which in faith was big enough, of holding and 
 ruling various uneasy nationalities in the European 
 East. It is only an exaggeration to think of 
 Austria-Hungary as an Oriental State, though she 
 did not extend her dominion and exercise her 
 power totally by Asiatic methods. To-day Ger- 
 many has subjected Austria ; and Germany 
 reaches out and beyond — across Bulgaria and 
 Turkey, on into Mesopotamia, and over the 
 territory of Western Russia. The nations that 
 stand in her way are to be crushed out or sub- 
 merged, if Pan-Germanism has its will. Some of 
 the appearances of sovereignty and independence 
 may remain in the semi-vassal States that now are 
 her allies. On the other hand, those nationalities 
 of the Near East claiming a right to think and 
 live independently can take their choice : either 
 be expatriated, driven into the open places of 
 North Africa, or become the hewers of wood 
 and the drawers of water for the lords of the 
 new vast domain with its headquarters in 
 Potsdam.
 
 RELATIONS 71 
 
 The principles on which the new imperium is 
 to rest I call Oriental, not European. You may- 
 say I exaggerate ; possibly I do. You may say 
 all Germany wants is economic opportunity and 
 a corridor to the East ; I hope that is all. I hope 
 I am wrong if I see Germany cutting herself off 
 from Europe and setting up an Asiatic imperium. 
 I am, moreover, willing — nay, anxious — to admit 
 that this new antique Asiatic despotism, if estab- 
 lished, would find hard work in overcoming the 
 tendencies of democracy and overcoming the 
 life and the spirit of the subject nations. But 
 you know that the military clique, the present 
 masters of Germany, intend to be the rulers in 
 reality of that vast dominion, and that in their 
 opposition to any sentimental regard for oppressed 
 nationalities they are fervently bitter. You know 
 that they have developed a political and social 
 philosophy which sanctifies conquest and deifies 
 tyranny. You know they are at least partly 
 responsible for Armenian extermination, and 
 probably for the process of annihilation now in 
 progress in Serbia. You know that some hundreds 
 of professors have signed a document which not 
 only justifies conquest but denies the right of the 
 conquered people to any share in the government 
 of the empire. You know that this process of 
 expansion will necessarily be based on brute 
 force and be saturated with the most vulgar 
 materialism, and that the dominion must develop 
 all of the most odious processes of imperialism 
 because its purpose is to hold subject nations in
 
 72 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 a condition of servitude. You know that there 
 are, or have been, tv\^o parties in Germany : one 
 determined hy hook or by crook to acquire an 
 Eastern imperium, the other hanging on to the 
 Occident and still hoping not to be estranged 
 entirely from the West in policy, politics, or 
 economy. You know^ that just nov^ the Eastern 
 party holds the whip hand. Let us pray that it is 
 riding to a fall. 
 
 In 191 3 a colleague of mine heard a concourse 
 of intellectual people in Berlin applaud with 
 enthusiasm an orator — a professor, I believe — ^who 
 announced his abhorrence for Parliamentismus^ 
 Presse, and Poehel : Parliamentary government, 
 the newspaper, and the populace ; these are the 
 foundations of Occidental civilization. Can any 
 one doubt that Germany stands at the parting 
 of the ways, or is already well along to Orientalism, 
 lured like the seaman of old by the riches of Araby 
 and India ? 
 
 Well, suppose one small portion of this comes 
 true — suppose Germany holds in her grip Western 
 Russia and reaches out from Potsdam that mailed 
 fist to squeeze her vassals in the Near East and 
 Asia Minor, where shall America stand ? With 
 what is left of Occidentalism in Europe ? Or 
 shall we say it is no concern of ours ; France can 
 rebuild her own villages, if she can find the 
 fragments ; and as for England, what have we 
 to do with the creator of parliamentary govern- 
 ment ? Plainly enough, in the presence of defeat 
 or of victory, the English-speaking peoples must 
 
 /
 
 RELATIONS 73 
 
 defend and build up the principles of Occidental 
 civilization. 
 
 All this, 70U may say, is but a nightmare. 
 Possibly there is no foundation for fear. And 
 by referring to Pan-Germanism as Oriental, one 
 may appear to do injustice to the Orient, for the 
 present Orient has been quickened by Occidental 
 liberty. I would not for the world cast aspersions 
 on Japan, in whose inteUigence and outlook I 
 have faith. I mean the ancient Orientalism. I 
 mean those tenets and principles of dominion 
 and of empire-building which the old faded 
 empires followed. To call the doctrines of Pan- 
 Germanism mediaeval would be the grossest 
 flattery. Pan-Germanism may fail, beaten in 
 Germany itself, too retroactive, too much out of 
 joint, to stand the normal repulsions of con- 
 scientious decency. But it is the domineering 
 Pan-German whom we face ; there is the alter- 
 native : between Occidentalism and the old 
 touchy empires of tawdry cruelty and despotism. 
 
 If this war ends with armaments undiminished, 
 with alliances that are practically great Roman 
 empires bristling with bayonets, if ancient Orient- 
 alism stalks abroad in Europe, where is America 
 to stand ? Alone ? Are we to fear Britain on 
 our northern border and take responsibility for 
 the restless republics and southward to the 
 Horn ? ^ If the war ends in hostility and 
 
 ^ By this is not meant that America must under all cir- 
 cumstances take responsibility for Central and South America,
 
 74 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 preparedness between nations — which may God 
 forbid — can there be anything wiser than the 
 actual structure by co-operation of the " Anglo- 
 Saxon block," which Germany had determined 
 to demolish ? If, on the other hand, the war ends 
 with a peace of peoples, the responsibility rests 
 with Britain and America in friendly co-operation 
 to make it real and abiding. I want to preach a 
 community of responsibility which, if it be real, 
 if it be democratic, if it be wholesome, must 
 rest on generosity and freedom, not on dictation. 
 History would seem to offer some hope, that the 
 principles of LiberaHsm which Britain has displayed 
 on an imperial scale, may be the cement of nations, 
 the binding principle of international good fellow- 
 ship as it has been of empire, and that the ethics 
 of Democracy, which have been so eloquently 
 spoken by President Wilson, may be accepted 
 as the basis of a peaceful world. 
 
 Irrespective of all identity of interest because 
 of common origins, one simple hard fact stands 
 plainly before us. Britain is the nation with 
 which America has the most intimate physical 
 relations ; the territory of one great common- 
 wealth of the Empire borders ours on the north 
 for three thousand miles. Moreover, in the 
 Caribbean Sea there are extensive British posses- 
 sions and strong outposts for the British Navy. 
 Her interests there demand protection, especially 
 
 but that in an armed world responsibility of a semi-military 
 character may be a necessity.
 
 RELATIONS 75 
 
 so if we also consider that the canal route is for 
 her and her constituent commonwealths a matter 
 of much consequence. The two nations may- 
 watch each other suspiciously and stand ready to 
 attribute every word or act as evidence of greed 
 and hostility ; or they may see that the interests 
 of the two peoples are intimate and mutually 
 supporting. For America and England to quarrel 
 over the conditions and prospects in the Caribbean 
 would be the apotheosis of folly; nothing con- 
 tributory to the actual benefit of either could be 
 detrimental to the interests of the other. Both 
 are interested in a free open canal ; both are 
 really interested in the prosperity and pro- 
 ductivity of the region. It is more than possible, 
 however, that suspicions may arise and wax into 
 hostilities ; if they do, it will be because one 
 nation or both act and appear to act on the old 
 basis of selfishness, a selfishness which will not in 
 actuality be self-interest, but short-sightedness. 
 If they do not become enemies, it will be because 
 the peoples abandon the old-time futile and sense- 
 less idea that, for economic profit and for a vague 
 thing called patriotic grandeur and glory, political 
 domination and possession are necessary. Ger- 
 many's economic progress and intellectual in- 
 fluence, great as they were, might have been 
 much greater had she abandoned, instead of 
 aggressively worshipping, the ideal of political 
 oyerlordship and the forcible extension of her 
 authority. Has this great war disclosed to us 
 the fact that such mistaken ideas are destructive
 
 76 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 of civilization and are a relic of the time when 
 the glory of a monarch and his riches depended 
 on the extent of his dominions and on the number 
 from whom he could extort taxes and raise 
 soldiers ? Certainly to a very great extent the 
 peace and good understanding between Britain 
 and America depend on a frank, open-hearted 
 and intelligent recognition of the mutuality of 
 interests in the Western Hemisphere. 
 
 President Wilson has proposed no less idea than 
 the establishment of the Monroe Doctrine of 
 the world. What does that mean ? It means, 
 not British or American or Anglo-Saxon imperial- 
 istic control, but the right of a nation to live 
 freely and to be protected from political and 
 industrial exploitation. It means that the 
 stronger must help and protect, not dominate and 
 exhaust, the weak. It means all possible emphasis 
 on the friendliness of nations and the community 
 of interests. But it does not mean isolation and 
 contrariety ; it cannot and should not mean 
 spheres of influence, by which is meant places for 
 economic manipulation ; it means self-deter- 
 mination, but not seclusion or exclusion. 
 
 If Great Britain and America, acting in this 
 spirit, striving to give expression and greater 
 reality to actual international solidarity, can 
 create the Monroe Doctrine of the world, then 
 all past achievements will seem as tinsel, save as 
 they prepared that consummation. Let no one 
 cite history to refute me. History, which is not 
 a basket of pebbles but a course of human growth.
 
 RELATIONS -j^ 
 
 never before saw a world of men crushed by the 
 same weight of anxiety, thinking the same 
 thoughts, reading the same news. Until some 
 fifty years ago, this earth had not seen hundreds 
 of millions of men and women that could even 
 read and write. I do not expect the millennium ; 
 but I do expect a changed world, and I do expect 
 that the English-speaking peoples, with no sense 
 of superior and exclusive culture, but with a pro- 
 found conviction of duty growing out of their 
 own past, will unite in feeling and in sympathetic 
 interest to play an honourable, helpful, and 
 civilizing role in the world at large. 
 
 " This ideal of an organized, free, co-operative 
 basis for the future Society of Nations, which 
 would have appeared chimerical before the war, 
 is so no longer, though many generations will 
 elapse before it will be in full working order. 
 The interesting point is that in the British Empire, 
 which I prefer to call (from its principal state) the 
 British Commonwealth of Nations, this transition 
 from the old legalistic idea of political sovereignty, 
 based on force, to the new social idea of con- 
 stitutional freedom, based on consent, has been 
 gradually evolving for more than a century. 
 And the elements of the future world Govern- 
 ment, which will no longer rest on the imperial 
 ideas adopted from the Roman law, are already 
 in operation in our commonwealth of nations and 
 will rapidly develop in the near future. As the 
 Roman ideas guided European civilization for 
 almost two thousand years, so the newer ideas
 
 78 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 embedded in the British constitutional and 
 colonial system may, when carried to their full 
 development, guide the future civilization for 
 ages to come." 
 
 Who spoke those words ? Some book-read 
 philosophic dreamer, carefully shielded from 
 harsh reality ? Some wordy British orator, seek- 
 ing to exalt and magnify political authority and 
 split the ears of the groundlings ? Some self- 
 satisfied islander, boasting of insular achievement ? 
 None of these, but a general, openly acknowledged 
 as skilful, brave, and resourceful ; not a Briton 
 at all, but a Boer, who less than twenty years ago 
 was leading the armies of the Transvaal against 
 the armies of Britain ; not an orator by pro- 
 fession, but a man of affairs, who, having crushed 
 the German armies in Africa, came to England 
 as the representative of free South Africa to 
 consult on the needs and duties of the empire. 
 
 General Smuts of South Africa, resting his 
 hope on what has been done, looks forward to a 
 world built on the principle of co-operation and 
 freedom. This is democracy as a principle of 
 world order ; the principle of self-development 
 strengthened by companionship. This is an 
 extension of the spirit of democracy till it forms 
 the essence of international relationship. Will 
 any of us cynically hold back and deny our own 
 selves in the wider currents of the world ? Those 
 that think it all a dream may be right ; but 
 please do not quote history to establish your 
 position. Only a few decades ago, this world was
 
 RELATIONS 79 
 
 a serf-holding, slave-holding, slave-trading world. 
 Only two centuries or so ago, religious liberty was 
 almost unknown, and the claims for its acceptance 
 were considered blasphemous immorality.^ The 
 mills of the gods do not always grind slowly. 
 
 ^ It is quite impossible, of course, to say when the principle 
 of religious liberty was adopted, in the New World or the 
 Old, No one would venture to say before 1650, and it might 
 be safer even for America to say the last quarter of the eighteenth 
 century. But any one clinging to the delusion that inter- 
 national hostility, built on a misconception of actual interest, 
 is bound to be maintained permanently because of the warring 
 character of national sovereignty since the establishment of 
 national States, will profit by considering the course of the 
 development of religious liberty.
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 
 
 The history of the Monroe Doctrine is a long 
 and complicated story. It is so because it 
 contains within itself a very large portion of 
 the diplomatic history of the United States. It 
 is all the more intricate and intangible because 
 it is not a distinct, clearly defined, legal prin- 
 ciple, but a policy based on historical experience, 
 and, in addition, an attitude of mind and a 
 sentiment, a sentiment often crudely expressed 
 and often doubtless of uncertain significance in 
 the minds of the average man, but nevertheless 
 very real and very actual. 
 
 To understand it at all we shall have to look 
 first at its earlier expression and its broader 
 bearing. As we carry the story forward, we shall 
 see, I think, an interesting historical process — 
 to put it briefly, we shall see the breaking away 
 from Europe and the implication and conse- 
 quence of that most significant fact, and in the 
 end, after a hundred and forty years of more or 
 less complete separation, the return of the 
 United States to Europe. This return, how- 
 ever, was not that of a repentant prodigal. The 
 United States and large portions of Latin 
 America have come to Europe with power and 
 with a proposal that Europe herself accept the 
 
 80
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 8i 
 
 principle of a rejuvenated, enlarged, wholesome 
 doctrine still bearing the name of the fifth 
 president of the United States. 
 
 From the time of the discovery of the western 
 world till the United States was estabhshed as a 
 separate nation, the American continents were 
 stakes in the game of European diplomacy and 
 manoeuvring for power. It may possibly be 
 unwise to go as far as Professor Seeley in his 
 fascinating little book, The Expansion of England^ 
 and explain all developments of British and 
 French hostilities, from the accession of WilHam 
 and Mary to the downfall of Napoleon, as due to 
 rivalry for America and trade in America ; but 
 there is certainly no exaggeration in saying that, 
 in all or nearly all of the controversies of Western 
 Europe, the desire for possessions in America or 
 the control of American trade had a large share. 
 As far as British history and British policy alone 
 are concerned, this is notably true from the time 
 of John Hawkins and Francis Drake. 
 
 When the United States became independent, 
 a change was wrought in European politics. 
 The territory covered by the new nation, which 
 reached from the Atlantic coast westward to the 
 Mississippi, was no longer the property of a 
 European nation ; its development was no longer 
 immediately affected by the decisions or the 
 ambitions of a mother country; it could not 
 very well be considered merely a pawn in the 
 play of European rivalries. This new nation 
 might conceivably, if it so chose, enter the game 
 
 G
 
 82 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 Itself and become engrossed and entangled in the 
 hereditary controversies of Europe, or it might 
 hold studiously aloof, refusing to take part in 
 the diplomatic enterprises or antipathies of the 
 Old World. But, it is obvious, if the United 
 States were to be really independent, it must 
 have the opportunity to live its own life, or — to 
 say the same thing in a different way — if it 
 would lead its own life and shape its own destiny, 
 it must keep free from the burdens, the animosi- 
 ties and the rivalries of Europe. To the extent 
 that the United States freed itself from European 
 irritations and limitations, it became independent 
 and self-determining. 
 
 Such statements appear too self-evident to 
 need announcement, but they underlie the his- 
 tory of the Monroe Doctrine ; their acceptance 
 is necessary for any proper consideration of 
 American diplomacy, and possibly I should say 
 of European diplomacy also. When European 
 politics was no longer complicated by the presence 
 of ambitions for American dominion, and when 
 America was cut free from the policies of Europe, 
 the political world entered upon a stage essen- 
 tially different from that in which it had been 
 moving from the day when Columbus came 
 sailing back out of the Sea of Darkness announcing 
 that he had found a new route to the riches of 
 the East.i 
 
 ^ For the purpose of making the position plain, I have 
 possibly allowed myself exaggeration in the paragraphs above. 
 But no one can well exaggerate the importance to the United
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 83 
 
 In the first decade or two after our Revolu- 
 tion, there was insufficient appreciation in Europe 
 of the fact that the United States had really 
 become a distinct nation, and, as a matter of 
 fact, there was not full appreciation in America. 
 We were looked upon as a sort of strange out- 
 cast, this new nation on a new continent 
 pretending to put into practice disagreeable 
 and wholly illusory principles of government. It 
 was hard for the Old World to treat the upstart 
 with the customary superficial courtesy of studied 
 diplomacy. Even America was shaken for years 
 by contentions growing out of European politics, 
 and did not immediately slough off the sense of 
 colonialism. Washington, as usual looking facts 
 full in the face, saw the simple sense of the thing. 
 Writing as early as 1788 to Sir Edward Newenham, 
 he said : " I hope the United States of America 
 will be able to keep disengaged from the labyrinth 
 of European politics and wars." John Adams, a 
 sturdy American, told Oswald even in 1 782, that 
 he was afraid of the new states being made tools 
 of Europe. 
 
 States of actual separation from Europe if the country would 
 be really independent. Of course — and this thought follows 
 naturally in the pages that follow — the fuUer and more nearly 
 complete change came when the Spanish and Portuguese 
 colonies in Central and South America became independent, 
 and when the United States asserted that those States, too, 
 were free from the policies of Europe and from the intrigues 
 of European diplomacy. One of the most telling and eloquent 
 passages in the speeches of Richard Cobden presents the 
 beneficent effect on Europe of the freedom of America.
 
 84 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 The outbreak of the war between England 
 and France in 1793 gave opportunity for an 
 exposition of American independence ; and the 
 United States, under the guidance of Washing- 
 ton, Hamilton and Jefferson, took a position 
 which was of immense consequence for the 
 succeeding years. The treaty of alliance, that 
 had been made with France some years before, 
 furnished perplexities ; and France, sending a 
 minister to America, proceeded to act as though 
 we were to be used as she saw fit. Then it was 
 that Washington issued his proclamation of 
 neutrality which, enlarged by contemporaneous 
 legislation, may almost be looked on as the 
 beginning of modern principles of the duties and 
 reponsibilities of neutral nations. Our govern- 
 ment had no intention of being embroiled in 
 the European conflict, though the people of the 
 United States were soon divided into bitterly 
 contending factions known as the British and 
 French factions. 
 
 The beHef that we must stand clear of Euro- 
 pean entanglements, and must live our own life, 
 soon became general, however ; for the average 
 American felt that his country had a character 
 and a purpose different from that of the Old 
 World. Jefferson, writing to our representative 
 in Spain (1792), said: "With respect to their 
 government, or policy, as concerning themselves 
 or other nations, we wish not to intermeddle 
 in word or deed, and that it be not understood 
 that our government permits itself to entertain
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 85 
 
 either a will or an opinion on the subject." A 
 short time later he wrote to another : " We 
 have a perfect horror at everything linking 
 ourselves with the politics of Europe." Wash- 
 ington's Farewell Address, which was intended 
 in part to express disapproval of factious disturb- 
 ances in America, pointed clearly to the necessity 
 of our maintaining ourselves in a position of posi- 
 tive independence free from European complica- 
 tions : " Europe has a set of primary interests 
 which to us have none, or a very remote relation. 
 Hence she must be engaged in frequent con- 
 troversies, the causes of which are essentially 
 foreign to our concerns. . . . Why forgo the 
 advantages of so peculiar a situation ? Why 
 quit our own to stand upon foreign ground ? 
 Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of 
 any part of Europe, entangle our peace and 
 prosperity in the toils of European ambition, 
 rivalship, interest or caprice ? 
 
 " It is our true policy to steer clear of perma- 
 nent alliances with any portion of the foreign 
 world, so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to 
 do it ; for let me not be understood as capable 
 of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. 
 I hold the maxim no less applicable to public 
 than to private affairs, that honesty is the best 
 policy. I repeat it, therefore let those engage- 
 ments be observed in their genuine sense. But 
 in my opinion it is unnecessary and would be 
 unwise to extend them." 
 
 If any one could be more explicit on this
 
 86 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 subject than George Washington it was Thomas 
 Jefferson, who came to the presidential chair 
 just at the beginning of the nineteenth century. 
 Washington and Hamilton might see, and did 
 see, the wisdom, the practical necessity, of main- 
 taining America's freedom from European policy ; 
 they might and did see the necessity of America's 
 occupying a position of dignified aloofness. But 
 to Jefferson this attitude was more than a matter 
 of calculated wisdom ; his sentiments, his inmost 
 feelings, prompted him to turn from Europe, all 
 its wars and all its inherited problems, policies 
 and perplexities, to the new life of the young 
 nation, whose destinies were in its own hands ; 
 and who could, if it would, lead a life of freedom 
 and take advantage of opportunities never before 
 offered a people to press forward toward a better, 
 simpler and happier existence. This whole- 
 hearted enthusiasm for the future America, this 
 sense of distinct opportunity and distinct des- 
 tiny, this continuous consciousness of America's 
 having broken away from the ills and burdens 
 of Europe, was an essential portion of Jeffer- 
 sonism. No one familiar with American history 
 is likely to be blind to the influence of Jefferson ; 
 but he was influential, after all is said, because 
 he embodied in himself the native aspirations, the 
 impulses and the emotional reactions of the great 
 masses of the plain people. They had broken 
 away from Europe ; they looked forward with 
 buoyant hopes ; they looked westward across the 
 continent not eastward across the Atlantic. Jeffer-
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 87 
 
 son's aversion to what was essentially European 
 was typical ; it but expressed the growing sense 
 of the people. The words of his first inaugural 
 address, one of America's great State documents, 
 may appear naive and unsophisticated ; but Jeffer- 
 son was neither. He speaks of being " kindly 
 separated by nature and a wide ocean from the 
 exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe ; 
 too high-minded to endure the degradations of 
 others, possessing a chosen country," etc. 
 
 If we remember that no other man in American 
 history, except Lincoln, so thoroughly impressed 
 himself on the mind of the people — and if we 
 remember that to-day, after the passing of a 
 century and more, the people of many sections 
 of the country refer to Jefferson almost as they 
 would to the Scriptures, and perhaps quote him 
 more frequently and correctly — we shall get some 
 idea of how firmly the American believed that 
 European ways were not our ways nor European 
 burdens our burdens. " We should be most 
 unwise, indeed," he wrote in 1803, " were we to 
 cast away the singular blessings of the position 
 in which Nature has placed us, the opportunity 
 she has endowed us with of pursuing, at a dis- 
 tance from the foreign contentions, the paths 
 of industry, peace, and happiness, of cultivating 
 general friendship, and of bringing collisions of 
 interest to the umpirage of reason rather than 
 force." 1 
 
 ^ The course of Jefferson's administration (l 801-1 809) was 
 marked by effort to keep the United States out of the European
 
 88 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 When the great territory of Louisiana was 
 secretly ceded by Spain to France in 1800, a 
 new situation presented itself. News of the 
 cession caused excitement in America. This 
 excitement was perhaps chiefly due to the fear 
 in the minds of the western men, the inhabitants 
 of the eastern half of the Mississippi Valley, 
 that the great river would be permanently 
 closed to American commerce ; but there were 
 also misgivings at the thought that a powerful 
 nation, like France, might once more obtain 
 vast territories in America. This possibly was 
 the beginning of opposition to the notion, 
 still firmly implanted in the American mind, 
 that the continents of America are to be par- 
 celled out and distributed by treaty and barter 
 among the nations of Europe — an unworthy 
 sentiment you may think, if it has not pre- 
 vented America in one way or another from 
 annexing territory and people, but a real senti- 
 ment nevertheless. Had the Americans known 
 the grand schemes, which soon found lodgment 
 in the mind of Napoleon, to take possession of a 
 large part of Central and South America, one of 
 those schemes of a world-empire which make 
 even the dreams of Pan-Germany seem less 
 fanciful and damnable than they are, there 
 
 conflict and to carry out his theories concerning the folly of 
 war. He made, on the whole, a noble struggle, and it is one 
 of the strange ironies or mishaps of history that Madison, his 
 successor and disciple, finally had to lead America into the 
 conflict and to add her feeble strength to that of Napoleon.
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 89 
 
 might well have been, in the early years of the 
 nineteenth century, still greater objection than 
 there was to the development of a French 
 colonial empire. This particular danger was, 
 however, avoided; in 1803, France ceded Loui- 
 siana to the United States, and in 181 2 we were 
 fighting against Britain, fighting the foes of 
 Napoleon. 
 
 The uprising of the Spanish people against 
 Napoleon in May 1808 is an epochal fact in 
 European and American history. The French 
 emperor was face to face with aroused national- 
 ism, but the uprising threatened more than the 
 extension of despotic power in Europe ; it pro- 
 duced the speedy dissolution of the Spanish 
 empire. Soon the Spanish dominions in America 
 were in revolt ; one by one the States of South 
 and Central America were engaged in revolution, 
 and one by one as the years went by they suc- 
 ceeded in maintaining their independence. It 
 is needless to remark on the momentous signi- 
 ficance of the disruption of the massive empire 
 which at one time circled the globe. It is 
 noteworthy that Jefferson wrote as early as 181 1, 
 referring especially to West Florida : " The 
 United States could not see without serious 
 inquietude, any part of a neighbouring territory, 
 in which they have, in different respects, so 
 deep and so just a concern, pass from the hands 
 of Spain into those of any other foreign power." 
 This was an early statement of the doctrine or 
 belief that the United States had an immediate
 
 90 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 and primary interest in the passing of Spanish 
 American territory into other hands, though 
 of course West Florida was contiguous territory 
 in which we had far more than sentimental 
 interest. 
 
 As these southern revolutionary governments 
 acquired a certain amount of stability, there 
 arose the question of recognition by the United 
 States ; but no definite step in that direction 
 was taken until 1821. In 1822 a representative 
 from Colombia was received, and soon after a 
 number of other States were thus formally 
 recognized. On the whole we had been exceed- 
 ingly cautious. We might naturally have mis- 
 givings about the permanence and stability of 
 these new commonwealths ; for the people had 
 had no such preparation for the tasks and burdens 
 of government as the English colonists had when 
 they broke away from the Mother Country. Still 
 recognition was necessary and wise ; and it fur- 
 nished the basis for the proclamation of Monroe, 
 which forms the main topic of this paper. 
 
 From this brief story of our recognizing the 
 South American States as members of the family 
 of nations, must not be omitted the popular 
 interest and enthusiasm in the United States 
 over the new-found liberty and independence 
 of these South American neighbours. There was 
 joy over each new soul that repented and entered 
 what was fondly imagined to be the Eden of 
 democratic government. 
 
 But meanwhile events had taken place in
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 91 
 
 Europe which were to have effect on American 
 conditions and policies. The Old World had 
 accepted the Metternich principle of " legiti- 
 macy," which on its positive side meant 
 obedience to an established monarchical govern- 
 ment, and on its repressive side meant the beating 
 down of popular intrusion upon the sacred right 
 and power of the Crown ; all mankind must be 
 kept closely confined within the limits set by 
 autocratic government. The Holy Alliance, as 
 it is popularly called, was an international union 
 or understanding of the most rigid and deter- 
 mined character. Its beginning was in a docu- 
 mentary statement of principles drawn up at 
 Paris, September 26, 181 5, a few months after the 
 overthrow of Napoleon, the arch-enemy of 
 European dignity, the disturber of placid, legi- 
 timate autocracy. The avowals of this memor- 
 able document are of a very moral, or at least of 
 a highly religious, character : " The policy of 
 the powers, in their mutual relations, ought to 
 be guided by the sublime truths taught by the 
 eternal religion of God our Saviour," and " the 
 precepts of that holy religion, the precepts of 
 justice, charity and peace. . . . Considering 
 themselves all as members of one great Christian 
 nation, the three allied princes look upon them- 
 selves as delegates of Providence called upon to 
 govern three branches of the same family, viz. 
 Austria, Russia, and Prussia." It is an interesting 
 and curious fact that this holy religious alliance, 
 supposed to embody the will of Divine Provi-
 
 92 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 dence, was entered into by one State which was 
 the home of thoroughly sohdified Roman Catho- 
 licism, by another which was the centre and 
 power of the Orthodox Greek Church, and by a 
 third which was predominantly Protestant. The 
 pious, solemn, religious tone and temper of the 
 document was attributable to the strange mystical 
 spirit of the Russian Czar, and he was doubtless 
 quite sincere and quite earnest in his sense of 
 religious obligation. 
 
 In these latter days when we are thinking and 
 speaking so seriously of a league of nations and 
 of a world organization based on justice, this 
 old, pitiful, narrow-souled Holy Alliance some- 
 times gives us pause. Are we too setting up as 
 eternal and unchangeable and as a principle to 
 which we dedicate our souls, a mere subjective 
 doctrine which, a hundred years from now, will 
 appear childish, rigid, unadapted to human 
 needs, profitless ? But there are vast differences 
 between the spirit of the Holy Alliance and that 
 of the present : the old alliance was based on 
 the theory of divine right and absolute govern- 
 ment ; the new proposed league of peace, based 
 on the principle of self-determination and demo- 
 cracy. The old wished to perpetuate what the 
 passing years had already nearly demolished, it 
 was already decadent ; the new seeks to establish 
 more firmly principles that certainly are not 
 dying, but entering into new vigour. The old, 
 fondling principles of justice and right, sprang 
 not from the hearts of peoples, but from the
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 93 
 
 crowned heads of absolute monarchs ; the new is 
 based on a recognition of broad popular needs, 
 on the cravings of humanity. That in times 
 gone hy, alliances, pious manifestoes, balances of 
 power, congresses of nations, concerts of Europe 
 and the like, have proved ineffective and un- 
 human, is an argument in behalf of higher and 
 better effort, an evidence of a need and a duty, 
 rather than proof that no international arrange- 
 ment is desirable or possible. History may well 
 make us cautious and doubtful of the plenitude 
 of our wisdom ; it may make us confident that 
 no regime has the qualities of perfect and 
 unchanging stability ; but to use the failings of 
 the past as an argument against effort for the 
 future is to argue for placid acceptance of every- 
 thing and the hopelessness of human endeavour. 
 To argue thus would be no wiser than to put up 
 with the " divine right " of kings, the immobility 
 of authority, the invincibility of legitimacy, and 
 the impossibility of extending human rights and 
 welfare. 
 
 Two months after the formation of the Holy 
 Alliance, an agreement was made between Great 
 Britain, Prussia, Russia, and Austria to act to- 
 gether in the management or control of European 
 affairs, and a few years later France was admitted 
 to the combination. The purpose of the arrange- 
 ment announced at the Congress of Aix-la- 
 Chapelle was to preserve the peace of the world. 
 It was declared to have " no other object than 
 the maintenance of peace and the guarantee of
 
 94 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 those transactions of which the peace was 
 founded and consolidated. . . . The repose of 
 the world will be constantly our motive." In 
 1 821 this AUiance announced that they had 
 " taken all of the people of Europe into their 
 holy keeping, and that in the future, all useful 
 and necessary changes in the legislation and 
 administration of States must emanate alone 
 from the free will, the reflected and enlightened 
 impulse of those whom God has rendered respon- 
 sible for power." A break came in 1822 ; Britain, 
 though then largely influenced by the semi- 
 reactionary forces, which the long struggle against 
 Revolutionary France and the Napoleonic Empire 
 had strengthened, was out of place in a combina- 
 tion of pious, hard-hearted, divine monarchs and 
 wily ministers, whose main object in life was to 
 crush out every symptom of popular unrest and 
 stamp upon every tendency to liberal govern- 
 ment. WelHngton, the British representative 
 at the Congress of Verona, refused, under instruc- 
 tions, to sign the extraordinary pronouncement 
 of that body, — and no wonder, unless all sense 
 of English political liberty had been lost ; for 
 the Allies announced their intention to put an 
 end to the system of representative government 
 in whatever country it might exist in Europe. 
 They were convinced that such a system was 
 " as incompatible with the monarchical prin- 
 ciples as the maxim of the sovereignty of the 
 people with the divine right." They promised 
 to suppress liberty of the Press and " to sustain,
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 95 
 
 in their respective states, those measures which 
 the clergy may adopt, with the aim of ameHorat- 
 ing their own interests, so intimately connected 
 with the preservation of the authority of Princes," 
 inasmuch as the principles of religion contribute 
 most powerfully to maintain passive obedience. 
 
 Before and after the Treaty of Verona, words 
 were transmuted into action. Austria overthrew 
 the parliamentarians in Naples, and crushed a 
 revolution in Piedmont. French forces moved 
 into Spain and won a victory for legitimacy, and 
 a like action in Portugal would have been taken 
 probably, had not England announced that she 
 would use her power to prevent it. Curiously 
 enough, Greek troubles gave in reality the 
 quietus to the unholy effort of the pious com- 
 bination of legitimate sovereigns. Did the prin- 
 ciple of legitimacy sanctify the power of the 
 unspeakable Turk, and must the combined 
 Powers smother the Greek revolt as they had 
 smothered the revolutions of Italy and Spain ? 
 Such consistency was too much for the tender, 
 governmental, and commercial consciences of the 
 holy monarchs ; and so the British, French, and 
 Russian ships of war beat back the Turk, and the 
 independence of Greece was established. 
 
 This brief presentation of European conditions 
 serves as a background for the Monroe Doctrine 
 and for American opinion. Imagine, if you 
 can, the sentiments and the resentments of 
 Adams, Clay, and Webster ; of the old Jefferson, 
 the writer of the Declaration of Independence ;
 
 96 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 of Madison, not Improperly called the Father of 
 the Federal Constitution ; and of James Monroe. 
 Imagine the feelings of the main body of the 
 American people, who were just then coming 
 into the full heritage of the new continent and 
 enjoying the sweets of political controversy and 
 an unlicensed Press. We are sometimes amused 
 at the American patriotic fervour of those decades, 
 at the people's exultation and exaltation, at their 
 pride and self-confidence, at their assurance that 
 they had the better part and the true life, at 
 their feeling that they, separated from the 
 " degradations " of Europe, were thrice blessed 
 and were smiled upon by the God who cared for 
 human freedom and justice. But we need not 
 be surprised that, for decades to come, American 
 destiny and the precepts of a boastful Democracy 
 were cherished with a passionate devotion by a 
 people daily gathering strength and, with asto- 
 nishing rapidity, changing the wilderness into 
 farms and villages. 
 
 But the statesmen of America knew that 
 despotic repression was not confined, if the 
 Holy Alliance had its way, to Europe alone. 
 The European Allies were seriously contemplating 
 the overthrow of the new Latin-American 
 governments; and in 1822 and 1823 the despatch 
 of a French fleet and army to South America 
 appeared not improbable. Fortunately for her 
 own reputation and for mankind Britain was 
 opposed to this enterprise ; and fortunately, too, 
 the British Foreign Office was in the hands of a
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 97 
 
 man of whom it has been said that " he was 
 the first EngHsh statesman to reahze the future 
 power of the United States and the value to 
 England of a good understanding." George 
 Canning was prepared to take a determined 
 stand against the intrusion of the Allied Powers 
 in American affairs. Those that wish to credit 
 the British position to a cunning recognition 
 of the advantages gained by British trade in the 
 free States of the new world, and those wishing 
 to see in Canning's statesmanship mere hostility 
 to French power, may, as far as I am concerned, 
 cherish their beliefs. But I prefer to believe 
 that British Democracy, was too far advanced 
 to promote tyranny, however blessed by the 
 name legitimacy, and I prefer to see in Canning 
 a man with insight, outlook, and breadth of 
 vision.^ 
 
 We must now turn to Russia and see American 
 relations with that country. In doing this, we 
 must remember that Russia was not only one of 
 the leaders of autocratic repression of popular 
 government, but also an American Power with 
 considerable territory in the north-west and with 
 even larger pretensions. In the interviews be- 
 tween the Russian minister at Washington and 
 John Quincy Adams, Monroe's Secretary of 
 State, we find a delightful antithesis of interests 
 and of principles. Adams was a seasoned diplo- 
 mat, entirely American, thoroughly equipped by 
 
 * The Monroe Doctrine, by A. B. Hart, p. 49. 
 H
 
 98 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 training and native ability for any emergency in 
 diplomacy, unafraid and unabashed. He could 
 be haughty, severe, direct, and, if need be, abrupt, 
 and he was not at all likely to be overawed by 
 the assumed superiority of the august representa- 
 tive of the mighty, though religious, head of All 
 the Russias. In these various interviews we find 
 Adams outlining, with a precision which the 
 Russian minister could understand, that the 
 American continents were no longer open to 
 European colonization. " I told him specially," 
 wrote Adams, " that we should contest the right 
 of Russia to any territorial establishment on this 
 continent, and that we should assume distinctly 
 the principle that the American continents are 
 no longer subject to any new European colo- 
 nial establishments." The Russian minister em- 
 phatically announced that his country was 
 devoted to the political principles of the Allied 
 Powers, and he declared those principles to be 
 " that power of union and agreement which in 
 our times has created a new political system — 
 a new phase of European civilization — a policy 
 whose object is simply to assure the peace of 
 all States which compose the civilized world " 
 (November 1823). 
 
 The situation was a trying one and not devoid 
 of serious danger. Russia, as we have said, was 
 an American Power, setting up claims to a vast 
 territory from the Arctic Ocean as far south as 
 the 51st parallel; and in addition she affirmed, 
 with obvious appHcation to the new Spanish
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 99 
 
 republics, the principles of the Holy Alliance, 
 the principles of despotic government. Indeed 
 the minister's words, if taken literally, might 
 well arouse the suspicion that the institutions 
 of the United States, hostile as they were in 
 spirit to the political system of Europe — this 
 " new phase of European civilization " — should 
 be swept out of existence. The objectionable 
 doctrines of the equality of man and his right to 
 self-government had been left too long to poison 
 the air and fill the minds of the European popu- 
 lace with visions of liberty. The discussions 
 with Russia form, therefore, an essential portion 
 of the antecedents of the Monroe Doctrine. 
 
 One further word must be said before we take 
 up the preparation and the significance of the 
 famous message of December 1823; and that 
 word has to do with the position of Great 
 Britain. That Power still refrained from recog- 
 nizing the Latin-American States, but her with- 
 drawal from the Holy AlHance and her evident 
 dislike of its principles weakened the combination 
 all but fatally. Canning did not believe that 
 the Spanish dominion in America could be 
 re-established and he was willing, therefore, to 
 go some distance in letting the world know that 
 both the United States and Britain objected to 
 forcible intervention by outside Powers with 
 intent to crush the new governments. In all 
 probability, the knowledge that Britain was at 
 least partly in sympathy aided the United 
 States and gave us additional confidence, though
 
 100 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 we cannot see that Adams was deficient in courage 
 or counted at all on British support. 
 
 The principles that Adams cherished were 
 strictly American, and we need not wonder at 
 his hesitation in connecting American policy 
 and purposes with those of the country which 
 until a few months before had been a member of 
 the political system of Europe. It was decided, 
 therefore, that the announcement should be 
 made by the United States independently, and 
 it was to stand more than once in the future 
 as a bulwark against British development in the 
 New World. Adams characteristically preferred 
 a frank and independent statement rather than 
 " to come in," as he later said, " as a cock-boat 
 in the wake of the British man-of-war." 
 
 In the autumn of 1823 President Monroe was 
 anxious and alarmed. He consulted Jefferson 
 and Madison. There were various Cabinet dis- 
 cussions, in the course of which we can in part 
 trace the formulation of the Doctrine. Both 
 Jefferson and Madison were favourable to joining 
 with England, and both for stating the position 
 of the United States as the basis of free institu- 
 tions. Adams was laborious, clear-headed, deter- 
 mined, and to him doubtless must be attributed 
 the real authorship of the Doctrine, though 
 Monroe's influence is by no means negligible. 
 In one paper drawn by Adams, which may be 
 considered the protocol of the finished message, 
 occurs a paragraph that did not appear in the 
 final draft ; but it rings so harmoniously with
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE loi 
 
 modern pronouncements of International relation- 
 ship that it deserves reading in full — 
 
 " (i) That the institutions of Government, to be lawful, 
 must be pacific, that is, founded upon the consent, and 
 by the agreement of those who are governed ; and 
 (2) that each Nation is the exclusive judge of the 
 Government best suited to itself, and that no other 
 Nation can justly interfere by force to impose a different 
 Government upon it. The first of these principles may 
 be designated as the principle of Liberty, the second as 
 the principle of national Independence — they are both 
 principles of Peace and of Good Will to Men." 
 
 Despite Adams' determination to let the Czar 
 know what principles of democratic government 
 are, he objected to the President's indicating 
 that the internal affairs of the European States 
 were our concern. The declaration must be 
 American and must make clear that the Western 
 Continents were no longer to be the playthings 
 of European politics or policy. 
 
 Monroe's message of December 1823 contains 
 the formal statement of principles which have 
 ever since borne his name. After referring to 
 proposals for settling the territorial claims on the 
 north-v/est coast, the President declared that the 
 occasion has arisen for asserting " as a principle — 
 that the American Continents, by the free and 
 independent condition which they have assumed 
 and maintain, are henceforth not to be con- 
 sidered as subjects for future colonization by any 
 European Powers . . ." 
 
 ' Reference is then made to the efforts that had 
 been made in Spain and in Portugal to improve
 
 102 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 the condition of the people. " It need scarcely 
 be remarked that the result has been, so far, very- 
 different from what was then anticipated. Of 
 events in that quarter of the globe with which 
 we have so much intercourse, and from which we 
 derive our origin, we have always been anxious 
 and interested spectators. The citizens of the 
 United States cherish sentiments the most 
 friendly in favour of the liberty and happiness 
 of their fellow-men on that side of the Atlantic. 
 In the wars of the European Powers in matters 
 relating to themselves we have never taken any 
 part, nor does it comport with our policy to do 
 so. It is only when our rights are invaded or 
 seriously menaced that we resist injuries or make 
 preparation for our defence. 
 
 " With the movements in this hemisphere we 
 are, of necessity, more immediately connected, 
 and by causes which must be obvious to all 
 enlightened and impartial observers. The poli- 
 tical system of the Allied Powers is essentially 
 different in this respect from that of America. 
 This difference proceeds from that which exists 
 in their respective governments. And to the 
 defence of our own, which has been achieved by 
 the loss of so much blood and treasure, and 
 matured by the wisdom of their most enlightened 
 citizens, and under which we have enjoyed un- 
 exampled felicity, this whole nation is devoted. 
 
 " We owe it, therefore, to candour, and to the 
 amicable relations existing between the United 
 States and those Powers, to declare that we should
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 103 
 
 consider any attempt on their part to extend 
 their system to any portion of this hemisphere 
 as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the 
 existing colonies or dependencies of any European 
 Power we have not interfered and shall not 
 interfere. But with the governments who have 
 declared their independence, and maintained it, 
 and whose independence we have, on great con- 
 sideration and on great principles, acknowledged, 
 we could not view any interposition for the 
 purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in 
 any other manner their destiny, by any European 
 Power, in any other light than as the manifesta- 
 tion of an unfriendly disposition towards the 
 United States." 
 
 The message further calls attention to the un- 
 settled state of Europe, the interposition in Spain, 
 and the natural interest of the United States 
 in the question of how far this method of political 
 repression may be carried ; the policy of the 
 United States has been continuously that of not 
 interfering with the internal concerns of other 
 Powers, to cultivate friendly relations, but not 
 to submit to injuries. " It is impossible that the 
 Allied Powers should extend their political system 
 to any portion of either continent without en- 
 dangering our peace and happiness. ... If we 
 look to the comparative strength and resources 
 of Spain and those new governments, and their 
 distance from each other, it must be obvious that 
 she can never subdue them. It is still the policy 
 of the United States to leave the parties to
 
 104 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 themselves, in the hope that other Powers will 
 pursue the same course." 
 
 For our present purpose it is unnecessary to 
 discuss the effcet of Monroe's announcement 
 upon the European chancelleries. It is sufficient 
 to say that, on the Continent, ministers grumbled 
 and sneered at the impertinence of the pre- 
 sumptuous Democracy that thought itself justi- 
 fied in dealing so boldly with a world problem. 
 In England, men received the news with expres- 
 sions of satisfaction ; and it was then that 
 Canning coined the famous phrase about calling 
 in the New World to redress the balance of the 
 Old. Britain has since that time on more than 
 one occasion claimed a paternal or at least an 
 avuncular interest in the statements of Monroe. 
 
 Let us now look a little more carefully at 
 Monroe's message to see what it contained or 
 implied and what it did not contain. This is 
 important because it formed the basis, as you well 
 know, of a real doctrine which accommodated 
 itself to the changing and developing desire, 
 impulse, or sentiment of the people ; and also, on 
 the other hand, served to build up a vague, though 
 often powerful, national sentiment, controlling 
 and shaping our foreign policy. Plainly the 
 message was based on the fact that European 
 principles of government, as exemplified by the 
 Holy Alliance, were not American, and that, as 
 we did not interfere in Europe, Europe should 
 not interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemi- 
 sphere. It included the assertion that the time
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 105 
 
 had gone by when the New World was open to 
 occupation and colonization by European Powers ; 
 the Western Continents, moreover, were cut loose 
 from the strategy of European intrigue and con- 
 flict. Up to this time the United States had 
 announced and practised isolation, save that it 
 had been driven into the war of 1 81 2; now 
 inferentially at least the whole Western Hemi- 
 sphere must be considered isolated from the broils 
 of Europe. The message evidently placed em- 
 phasis on the interests and safety of the United 
 States ; it did not merely cast the protecting 
 arm of a stronger brother about the weaker 
 Republics of the south. The danger uppermost 
 in Monroe's mind was any effort of the Holy 
 Alliance to set up and extend to America the 
 political principles of Metternich and Alexander. 
 There were " two spheres " of political interest 
 and political principle, and, especially if we re- 
 member the attitude of America preceding 1823, 
 it inferentially involved the avoidance of the 
 tangled and destructive tendencies of European 
 politics. 
 
 Though it is not obvious in the exact words of 
 the document itself, and though Monroe probably 
 did not intend to lay down the distinct doctrine 
 that interference by one State with the internal 
 government of another was objectionable ; such 
 an implication is easily attached to the original 
 declaration. We may find, therefore, in the moral 
 basis of the message, some reason for making it 
 cover the principle of national self-determination.
 
 io6 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 of which so much is said in these latter days. 
 We may be at least partly justified in believ- 
 ing that the framers of the message objected 
 to the battering down of weak nations by the 
 blows of a superior Power or a superior com- 
 bination of Powers. On the whole, however, the 
 message was chiefly concerned with the separa- 
 tion of the New World from the politics and 
 controversies of Europe. 
 
 That the Doctrine has for a hundred years 
 been a helpful force in the world, all students of 
 the Doctrine heartily believe. The entangle- 
 ment of America in European rivalries would 
 have been unfortunate in the extreme. Aided 
 and protected in some measure by Monroe's 
 message and the sentiment which has been at- 
 tached to it, the South American Republics have 
 been enabled to live their own lives and tread the 
 difficult and stony path leading to peace and 
 democratic order. 
 
 As the years went by after 1823, conditions 
 changed essentially. Even before Monroe wrote 
 his message, the Holy Alliance was on the verge 
 of collapse ; by 1830 the governments of Europe 
 were in no condition to force the principles of 
 divine right on the rest of the world ; many of 
 them had internal troubles of their own ; the 
 democratic virus was spreading contagion in 
 Europe. Little by little, States became demo- 
 cratic, or semi-democratic, or put on the airs and 
 carried some of the outward semblances of popular 
 rule. To-day, Germany is the only State in
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 107 
 
 which the monarch openly flaunts in the faces 
 of his subjects his divine right and his divine 
 mission to rule. And so the Monroe Doctrine 
 of the last fifty years has been necessarily in some 
 respects different from that of earlier days. It 
 has no longer the support of the two spheres of 
 political principles ; France is now a Democracy, 
 and in 1823 it was France, presumably, to whom 
 the Allied Powers intended to entrust the task of 
 overthrowing the disobedient Southern Republics 
 and bringing them under the yoke of Spain. 
 Despite the changes in Europe, the Monroe 
 Doctrine, unless it has undergone radical change 
 since April 191 7, still objects to the extension of 
 European authority or influence to the American 
 continents. Our government would, I suppose, 
 object to the intrusion of France or any other 
 European Power in the affairs of America and 
 oppose the acquisition of territory in the New 
 World. The sentiment of detachment, originally 
 based on differences of political principle and on 
 the need of distinguishing our primary interests 
 from those of Europe, has maintained itself 
 despite the growth of commercial communication 
 with Europe, despite intimate intellectual con- 
 tacts between European peoples and ourselves, 
 and despite the fact that, in time and in social 
 interest, we are nearer France and Britain than 
 we are to Brazil, Argentina, or Chile. 
 
 Before attempting to explain the modern 
 Monroe Doctrine, it is well to take up one or two 
 other matters and to review hastilv some of the
 
 io8 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 more important historical occurrences of the last 
 hundred years. In the first place, we should 
 notice that Monroe gave, neither explicitly nor 
 impliedly, any pledge that we should not extend 
 our own territory in America. Doubtless Adams' 
 principles of national self-determination would 
 run counter to forcible conquest. Yet Adams 
 said in 1823 : " It is scarcely possible to resist the 
 conviction that the annexation of Cuba to our 
 federal republic will be indispensable to the con- 
 tinuance and integrity of the Union itself." We 
 had, at that time, just annexed the Floridas, and 
 it was not at all likely that the message was in 
 any way intended to be a self-denying ordinance 
 and preclude peaceful acquisition of territory. 
 Before long we annexed Texas (1845), the Mexican 
 War was begun, and by 1848 the territory of the 
 United States stretched across to the Pacific and 
 we had become a Pacific as well as an Atlantic 
 Power. 
 
 Whether Monroe's message involved the prin- 
 ciple of respect for small nations or not, the time 
 came, in the decades between 1840 and i860, 
 when America was in spirit imperialistic. This 
 sentiment had various ingredients ; it was partly 
 land-hunger, partly boastfulness and sense of 
 power, partly an idealistic belief that American 
 institutions must be extended, partly only the 
 old feeling of suspicion and hostility toward other 
 nations, — an unpleasant product of that intense 
 and exclusive nationalism which characterized 
 the nineteenth century. Before 1850, the senti-
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 109 
 
 ment of which we have spoken was fully developed ; 
 it was not enough to object to the extension of 
 European " principles." Not even by purchase, 
 treaty, or consent was any portion of the West- 
 ern Hemisphere to be acquired by a European 
 Power. Everything was to remain in statu quo, 
 unless we changed it by acquiring territory our- 
 selves. The whole flamboyant doctrine of 
 America for the Americans was quite naturally 
 enunciated by Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, 
 " the Little Giant " ; it was a perfectly natural 
 product of the politics of the confident, self- 
 satisfied, highly imaginative, idealistic frontier, 
 even if it was tainted by much of the arrogance 
 and the materialism of the Old-World politics 
 which these wordy American orators pretended 
 to despise utterly. " Europe is . . . tottering 
 on the verge of dissolution," the " Little Giant " 
 exclaimed in 1845. "When you visit her, the 
 objects which enlist your highest admiration are 
 the relics of past greatness ; the broken columns 
 erected to departed power. , . . They bring up 
 the memories of the dead, but inspire no hope 
 for the living ! Here everything is fresh, bloom- 
 ing, expanding and advancing. I would blot 
 out the lines on the map which now mark our 
 national boundaries on this continent, and make 
 the area of liberty as broad as the continent 
 itself." 
 
 Such spasms of oratory were, of course, char- 
 acteristic of those feverish years, which Professor 
 Dunning has wittily called " the roaring forties."
 
 no AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 They are only one degree worse or better than the 
 secret poHcy or the expressions of flaming 
 patriotism that could be discovered in the records 
 of Great Britain, and probably really more human 
 and respectable than the practices and principles 
 of Continental Europe. No one can look on the 
 history of Europe or America in the 'forties with 
 much equanimity, unless he remind himself that 
 men were then alive who were to lead the nations 
 on to better things in the last half of the century. 
 Before i860 it was plain that the Government 
 of the United States had assumed the position 
 of guardian in the Western Hemisphere ; but this 
 guardianship, though partly based on popular 
 suspicion of European politics and partly also on 
 pride in American institutions, was on the whole, 
 as expressed in the words of leading politicians, 
 not much less than a policy of aggrandizement. 
 If this is too harsh a judgment, it was a policy of 
 hands off for Europe and a free, hand for the 
 United States ; and the ethics of the diplomacy 
 consisted in the duty of praising democracy and 
 in looking keenly, almost intolerantly, at the 
 struggling and distracted Repubhcs of the 
 Southern continent. Meanwhile, there had 
 arisen one of those startling contrasts and con- 
 tradictions that vex and disturb the regular and 
 seemly flow of history. In 1823 Monroe and 
 Adams had given utterance to the sentiments of 
 humanity in opposition to the cruelty and 
 arrogance of despotic power; before i860 the 
 United States stood out before the world as the
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE iii 
 
 champion of slavery. Prating loudly of liberty, 
 we held 4,000,000 black people in bondage. The 
 foreign policy and the ethical principles of Monroe 
 and Adams were darkened if not deadened under 
 the pall of slave-holding imperialism. 
 
 With the advent of Lincoln things looked 
 better ; the new Republican Party was a Liberal 
 party and characteristically prepared to act open- 
 heartedly, or at the worst decently, in its dealings 
 with weaker States. In the eyes of the Republican 
 party, the old Democratic party was tainted by 
 schemes of slavery extension. Seward, Lincoln's 
 Secretary of State, was actuated by feelings of 
 neighbourliness and respect, and he openly 
 announced the right of a State " to establish and 
 maintain its own government without inter- 
 vention, intrusion, or even influence, from foreign 
 nations and especially from the United States." 
 Anticipatory of President Wilson's later position 
 was Seward's refusal to acknowledge, without 
 delay, the authority of a usurping despot, who, 
 with well-known agility and skill, had pounced 
 upon the government of his native State. Seward 
 wished some kind of guaranty that the usurper's 
 power had real basis and rested on popular desire. 
 
 Through the days of Seward (i 861-1869) ^^^ 
 in the administrations of the next two decades, 
 there was, however, no recession from the 
 principle that the interests of the United States 
 in the Western Hemisphere were above and 
 beyond those of any or all European Powers. 
 Not only did we by a plain pronouncement of
 
 112 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 our displeasure drive the French from Mexico 
 in 1866; but at later times we quite unequivo- 
 cally opposed the establishment of European 
 dominion, and even the extension of permeating 
 influence or control. The nations of Europe 
 were given to understand that in the Americas 
 the interests of the United States were para- 
 mount No real leadership ^ among the American 
 nations was set up, a leadership based on a 
 recognition of community of interest and the 
 wisdom of good understanding ; but there was 
 opposition to interference by an external Power, 
 an opposition as decided as Europe would have 
 felt if America had, unsummoned, stepped in to 
 settle the Schleswig-Holstein question or the 
 Alsace-Lorraine difficulty. Our Government, 
 feeling more and more the actual necessity of 
 freedom for her own policies, intended to be free 
 from all perplexities arising from European 
 ambition. Even Britain's position in Central 
 America and British attitude toward the canal 
 problem were already vexing the soul of the 
 American diplomat. 
 
 With this rapid survey of developments in the 
 three decades after the Civil War, we must con- 
 tent ourselves ; and we pass on to the Venezuelan 
 controversy of 1895, when President Cleveland 
 
 ^ Secretary Blaine did make attempts, not entirely without 
 success, to build up co-operation between the Latin-American 
 States and the United States ; but it is probably safe to say 
 that our dominant idea at the time was our interest as distinct 
 from that of Europe.
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 113 
 
 and Secretary Olney laid down with great dis- 
 tinctness what they believed were our rights and 
 responsibilities, and what the Monroe Doctrine 
 actually was. Venezuela and Britain were en- 
 gaged in a trying controversy over some roods of 
 territory, each claiming the disputed land as her 
 own. Britain refused to arbitrate, and Vene- 
 zuela, though impotent, was angry. Suddenly 
 the United States entered the lists, demanding 
 arbitration ; President Cleveland declared to 
 Congress that a commission of our own should 
 investigate the problem and reach its own con- 
 clusions, and that our Government should main- 
 tain the findings of the commission. Secretary 
 Olney in his verbal controversies with Lord Salis- 
 bury was emphatic, not to say brusque, while 
 Lord Salisbury was precise, not to say sharp, in' 
 his retorts. The American Secretary, not cloud- 
 ing his assertions by clever circumlocution, openly 
 proclaimed that, " To-day the United States is 
 practically sovereign on this continent, and its 
 fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines 
 its interposition. Why ? It is not because of 
 the pure friendship or good-will felt for it. It 
 is not simply by reason of its high character as a 
 civilized State, not because wisdom and justice 
 and equity are the invariable characteristics of 
 the dealings of the United States. It is because, 
 in addition to all other grounds, its infinite 
 resource combined with its isolated position 
 render it master of the situation and practically 
 
 invulnerable as against any or all other Powers. 
 I
 
 114 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 . . . The people of the United States have 
 learned in the school of experience to what extent 
 the relations of the States to each other depend, 
 not upon sentiment nor principle, but upon 
 selfish interest." ^ 
 
 If anything could excuse such extraordinary — 
 I feel like saying offensive — language it was the 
 calm and maddening refusal of Britain to arbitrate 
 and the deliberate failure of British ministers to 
 recognize a state of mind and a policy which the 
 passing years had produced. Probably both 
 President Cleveland and his secretary were con- 
 vinced that nothing but harsh words and a very 
 bold front would make any impression on the 
 British Cabinet of those days. Lord Salisbury 
 argued first, that the Venezuelan controversy 
 conflicted not at all with the original declarations 
 of Monroe, and thus refused to recognize the 
 development of American influence and popular 
 institutions ; and he then announced that Her 
 Majesty's Government must not be understood 
 as accepting the Monroe Doctrine. Although I 
 am ashamed to confess it, I am inclined to believe 
 that, if Britain had not yielded, the majority of 
 the American people would have gone willingly 
 into war ; they would have gone into war for 
 an idea and because of resentment at what they 
 
 ^ President Cleveland did give a basis for the Doctrine that 
 
 savours of morality : " The Monroe Doctrine finds its recog- 
 
 . nition in those principles of international law which are based 
 
 on the theory that every nation shall have its rights protected 
 
 and its just claims enforced."
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 115 
 
 believed were the selfish, dictatorial and un- 
 reasonable purposes of the British Government. 
 Olney's words must strike one to-day as most 
 extraordinary, as they did the writer of this 
 paper twenty-three years ago. His reference to 
 America's " infinite resource " and American 
 mastery of the situation were, in light of British 
 sea-power and our insignificant armed prepara- 
 tion, little less than ridiculous. Fortunately 
 there were men in England who looked with 
 horror on war between the two countries, and 
 fortunately America's independent examination 
 of the whole problem gave England an oppor- 
 tunity to recede without humiliation. Even 
 though the American Secretary may have in- 
 tended to attribute to Europe alone the sinister 
 principles of sordid selfishness, it is disheartening 
 to think that only twenty-three years ago such 
 crude and bitter utterances issued from the State 
 Department with apparent sanction of their 
 general validity. On either side of the water, 
 diplomatic courtesy has rarely sunk lower. 
 
 The Monroe Doctrine came out of the con- 
 troversy with new virility. It was, it seemed, no 
 mere principle for the defence of popular institu- 
 tions nor a mere doctrine of primary interest. 
 The will of America in all European dealings with 
 the New World was a matter of immediate con- 
 cern ; our fiat was law and our purposes needed 
 no justification but our word. Senator Lodge 
 defended the Monroe Doctrine simply and solely 
 as a fact ; it needed no explanation and no defence ;
 
 ii6 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 it simply was : " We declare the Monroe 
 Doctrine," he said, " to be a principle which we 
 believe essential to the honour, the safety, the 
 interests of the United States. We declare it as 
 a statement of fact, and we must have it recog- 
 nized as our independence and national existence 
 are recognized by all the world." Though he 
 offered some slight modification, the Doctrine 
 appeared to be that whatever was done or 
 attempted by Europe on our side of the water 
 must be done with our approval or connivance. 
 Possibly, as far as European interference in 
 America is concerned, Mr. Lodge's statement is 
 the Monroe Doctrine of to-day, but much water 
 has flowed under the bridge since 1895. New 
 perplexities have arisen and new responsibili- 
 ties ; a liberal and just conception of duties has 
 come to the light, a conception which embodies 
 ethical considerations and emphasizes justice and 
 liberty and companionship and service, ideals 
 which are also facts, and they have been burned 
 more deeply into our very souls by the gigantic 
 misery of war. And yet, notwithstanding recent 
 developments this must be said : the United 
 States has a lasting interest in the affairs of the 
 Western Hemisphere, and, if anything like the 
 old principle of selfish politics is to continue in 
 the world at large, the Monroe Doctrine will 
 almost necessarily be a defence against any kind 
 of foreign intrusion. With militarism triumphant 
 it may be used as an excuse even for offence by 
 ourselves against Latin American autonomy.
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 117 
 
 If the old regime in diplomacy and international 
 relation is to remain — notice we already call it 
 the old regime — then the Monroe Doctrine 
 simply is a fact ; we forbid and shall try to prevent 
 any interference with the Western Hemisphere, 
 simply and only because we want no trespass on 
 our chosen preserves, no lodgment, no influence 
 within a field of operations which is primarily 
 American. Under the old regime of suspicion 
 and military menace, we are, I believe, fully 
 justified in simply stating the Doctrine as a fact, 
 without palliation or praise or verbal defence. 
 It deserves no higher or better place, if that is 
 all there is to it — no higher or better place in 
 the estimation of idealistic statesmen than any 
 European doctrine or policy which would shut 
 out foreigners from cherished areas of economic 
 penetration and political overlordship. It may, 
 I grant you, be even then less purely selfish than 
 the European policy of like character ; but, as 
 it is stated by Mr. Lodge, it is fundamentally 
 a policy, though based on history and fostered by 
 a quasi-idealistic sentimentality, which secures 
 recognition on the same ground as that on which 
 spheres of influence and dictation are recognized 
 in the old-time and give-and-take (especially 
 take) of European diplomacy. Internally it will 
 be, I trust, altruistic ; its selfishness may be soft- 
 ened ; but as a fact to be recognized by the other 
 nations of the world it will make no higher, 
 deeper or more human claims, than the assump- 
 tions of the well-known policy of Europe. Only
 
 ii8 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 if the world accepts the ethics of a clean Monroe 
 Doctrine can we expect it to rest on anything 
 but force. 
 
 Before attempting to sketch the Monroe 
 Doctrine of the present day, in so far as it deals 
 with relations between American States, I must 
 turn for a moment to the canal question, for about 
 the Panama Canal in recent years the prob- 
 lems of Monroeism have gathered. Rightly or 
 wrongly, the United States has long had objec- 
 tions to any but an American owned and con- 
 trolled canal. Useful to the world the canal 
 might be ; but once built it would be to us a 
 necessity. Nearly forty years ago President 
 Hayes declared that it would be " virtually a 
 part of the coast-line of the United States." 
 It is unnecessary to recount the abrogation of 
 the old Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850, and the 
 making of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaties of 1900 
 and 1 901, which secured to America the inde- 
 pendent right to build and manage the canal. 
 We may also refrain from discussing our troubles 
 with Colombia and our acquisition of the canal 
 strip ; we got the canal strip and we built the 
 canal. I do not mean by this to justify or to 
 condemn the ethics of our procedure; it is 
 simply too complicated a problem for discussion 
 here. We banished malaria and yellow fever, 
 and at an expense of about $400,000,000 we 
 finished the canal. Let us pass over, too, the 
 question of our right to fortify it ; in the light 
 of present conditions wc should be in a pretty
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 119 
 
 fix down there if all we had to rely on were fides 
 Teutonics. We omit, too, the discussion over 
 the right to grant free passage to our coast-trade 
 vessels ; under President Wilson we removed the 
 discrimination in favour of our own coast trade. 
 
 I have been hurrying on to a consideration 
 of the later Monroe Doctrine. As the canal is 
 ours, though free to the world, and as we have 
 developing trade in the Gulf of Mexico and the 
 whole Caribbean, that region has for us a peculiar 
 interest. In a world of peace and good-will we 
 could go thoughtlessly and fearlessly on ; in a 
 world of suspicion, armament, intrigue and heart- 
 less economic exploitation, we must be on our 
 guard. To put the case strongly, too strongly, 
 the Caribbean is within our sphere of influence ; 
 to put it mildly we must have, in its waters or 
 surrounding territory, no rival which actually 
 threatens our power and our routes of com- 
 munication. It is our Mediterranean, near at 
 hand ; we must hold its Gibraltar and its Malta ; 
 and it is our North Sea — no Heligoland in the 
 Caribbean for us ; Colombia and Venezuela are 
 our Belgiums, though a hundred times more 
 perplexing and a thousand times less self-reliant. 
 Such, I say, must be our attitude in general if 
 the principles of force are to govern international 
 relations. 
 
 Let us first notice the extension of our authority 
 and the acquisition of strategic positions in this 
 region during the last twenty years. In 1898 
 we secured the independence of Cuba ; we
 
 120 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 established practically a tenuous and unselfish 
 protectorate over the young Republic and ac- 
 quired a coaling station at Guantanamo. At the 
 same time (1899) we accepted Porto Rico from 
 the tremulous hand of Spain. In 1903 we 
 obtained the canal strip and soon began our work 
 on the canal. By a recent treaty, we purchased 
 St. Thomas from Denmark. The Gibraltars 
 and Maltas have been falling into our hands. 
 By establishing quasi-protectorates over Santo 
 Domingo and Haiti, of which I shall say more 
 in a moment, we gained reasonable confidence 
 that the important harbours in the island of Haiti 
 will not pass into foreign possession, although our 
 action was not primarily actuated by military 
 motives. There have been infinite perplexities 
 with Nicaragua ; but these have been partly 
 settled by our obtaining by treaty, within the 
 last two years or so. Great and Little Corn 
 Islands in the Caribbean and Fonseca Bay on the 
 Pacific. I do not mean to assert that all this 
 extension of authority and all these acquisitions 
 of strategic positions are due to deliberate policy 
 to build up military and naval security ; certainly 
 there has been little or no evidence of imperial- 
 istic temper or desire among the people at large ; 
 but the fact remains, that in the last twenty 
 years we have greatly strengthened our hold in 
 the whole Gulf-Caribbean region. 
 
 If the task on hand were only to seize points 
 of strategic advantage, it would not present 
 extreme difficulty. But such is not the case ;
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 121 
 
 we do not desire to pounce upon helpless States 
 or to enlarge our responsibilities. Aside from 
 our feeling that the Caribbean is our Mediter- 
 ranean because we must guard the canal and our 
 routes of trade, what is the nature or what are 
 the causes of the general problem ? The nations 
 of Central America and the northern coast of 
 South America are weak, unstable and, in the 
 management of public finance, far from frugal 
 and economical. We often question their ability 
 to maintain their equilibrium ; we often question 
 their ability to sustain thoroughly trustworthy 
 governments capable of fulfilling their obliga- 
 tions. No policy and no doctrine can transmute 
 •ignorance and idleness into intelligence, fore- 
 thought and industry. Still we feel, and in some 
 measure have assumed a certain vague responsi- 
 bility, at least a defensive responsibility, for these 
 nations in their international relationships. 
 
 Because, or partly because, of the conditions 
 just mentioned, we have found it necessary to 
 take particular interest in the public financial 
 conditions of these countries. Public debts due 
 to foreign capitalists are a source of concern. 
 European creditors do not quietly and patiently 
 put up with careless disregard of public obliga- 
 tions. European nations may be tempted to use 
 force to collect debts or may make the indebted- 
 ness a ground for actual political domination. 
 On account of the apparently hopeless condition 
 of Santo Domingo, American authorities, in 
 1905, under the direction of President Roosevelt,
 
 122 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 and with the consent of the Government of Santo 
 Domingo, took control of the customs revenue. 
 This was brought about by a characteristically 
 bold stroke of our President, who found that he 
 did not need the consent of the Senate for such 
 an undertaking, because it could be done by an 
 " agreement " and not by a treaty. Two years 
 later, in 1907, a treaty was ratified by both 
 Governments. The condition in the Dominican 
 Republic and the need of action on our part 
 are matters of much interest, for they show how 
 conditions may, in spite of ourselves, force us 
 into a quasi, semi-real, half-hearted imperialism. 
 Santo Domingo was in a condition approaching 
 industrial ruin and existed as a sort of phantom 
 republic fast falling into decay. Irrespective 
 of its public debt it might be even a breeding 
 place for disease affecting the whole Caribbean 
 region, the canal district and perhaps our own 
 southern ports. I do not know how much the 
 United States was affected by prophylactic 
 motives as distinguished from political and 
 financial needs, but if we remember how yellow 
 fever aided Toussaint I'Ouverture to drive out 
 the forces of Napoleon something over one 
 hundred years ago, we may think that the mos- 
 quito helps to make history ; it is no respecter of 
 doctrines. But, however this may be, the 
 patience of foreign creditors was nearing an end ; 
 and, if we were to protect the Dominicans 
 from foreign interposition, it was necessary to 
 do something. Fortunately the plan we adopted
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 123 
 
 worked admirably ; Santo Domingo, in the hands 
 of American financial agents, began to look up ; 
 revenue was actually collected and honestly 
 distributed ; and a recent writer,^ to whose 
 admirable treatment I am indebted for some of 
 the statements in this paper, calls attention to the 
 fact that an ex-president of the Republic went 
 out of office without the help of a revolution and 
 lived to die without the help of an assassin. 
 
 In the meantime conditions in Haiti were 
 almost as bad as they had been in Santo Domingo. 
 The American Navy restored order in the dis- 
 tracted so-called republic — more properly desig- 
 nated as a revolving despotism — and finally, in 
 the administration of President Wilson, Feb- 
 ruary 1916, a treaty was made and ratified, 
 granting to our Government supervision of the 
 finances of the country. Secretary Lansing 
 announced that " the United States has no 
 purpose of aggression, and it is entirely disin- 
 terested in promoting this protectorate." We 
 have no reason to suppose that this action was 
 taken because of some secret imperialistic design. 
 
 I have already spoken of our arrangement 
 with Nicaragua, whereby we secured territory ; 
 this arrangement was due probably partly to 
 our desire for possession of certain strategic 
 positions, and partly due to internal financial 
 and political confusion of the country. No 
 final treaty has been entered into with Nicaragua 
 
 ^ Chester Lloyd Jones, in The Caribbean Interests of the 
 United States,
 
 124 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 authorizing our supervision of her finances ; but 
 American capitahsts have done something, and 
 it is not unhkely that here, too, our Government 
 must step in to take charge of the revenues. 
 Thus it is seen that v^e have been forced by the 
 Monroe Doctrine — i. e. by our permanent interest 
 in preventing foreign Powers from obtaining new 
 pohtical authority in the Western Hemisphere, 
 and by our sense of obhgation and friendHness — 
 to cstabHsh partial or real protectorates in the 
 Caribbean region. 
 
 So far we have considered the perplexities 
 arising from governmental incompetence and 
 from the burden of the public debts owned 
 by foreign capitalists. But there are other 
 problems on the whole more vexing and dis- 
 turbing. If the Caribbean is our Mediterranean 
 because of our interest in the canal, Central 
 America and Mexico are our North African 
 States. They are undeveloped and backward 
 regions, like those which have been economically 
 penetrated by the European Powers ; they are 
 like those backward nations which have been 
 called the stakes of modern diplomacy. There 
 are many causes for the present European War, 
 but certainly one of them is the rivalry of the 
 nations for economic and political control in 
 Africa and Western Asia. The temptation to 
 extend capitalistic interest in Mexico and Central 
 America is very great. The region is exceed- 
 ingly rich and inviting ; it cannot be left unde- 
 veloped ; capital is needed and capital has already
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 125 
 
 sought its legitimate opportunity. Because of 
 the attractive fields for industrial enterprise, and 
 because of our wary watchfulness, the Germans 
 have sneered at the Monroe Doctrine, declaring 
 that it is purely an economic pronouncement. 
 This sneer at our pretended possession of altru- 
 ism or of any purely political principles, this 
 intimation that we are cherishing Monroe for 
 revenue only, is of course unfounded, as perhaps 
 I may show later ; but certainly the present, and 
 probably the future, perplexities grow out of 
 economic conditions. As the shield of the 
 Monroe Doctrine was first held up a hundred 
 years ago to protect struggling independent 
 nations from being crushed and free government 
 from being overthrown, so now we fear economic 
 exploitations and all its effects. We realize 
 that European capitalists, that have made invest- 
 ments in Central America, may demand protec- 
 tion and security from their own Governments, 
 and that the call may be answered by political 
 interference, or possibly by political domination. 
 I have said that the countries of the region 
 are rich in certain natural products and natural 
 resources. From them come great quantities of 
 sugar, coffee, cocoa, rubber, lumber, fruit, and, 
 perhaps most important of all, petroleum. It is 
 said that 7,000,000,000 bananas are exported in 
 a single year, and we now annually consume in 
 the United States some sixty-five bananas for 
 every man, woman, and child in the land. Is it 
 necessary to do more than refer to the oil deposits
 
 126 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 of Mexico and the Caribbean region, in order to 
 call up a whole Pandora box of cupidities and 
 perils ? The oil regions of Mexico are of vast 
 extent and of great productivity. Oil fields, as 
 yet largely unexplored but doubtless of much 
 importance, lie in Colombia. There are, I 
 believe, indications that the whole northern 
 coast of South America will be found to be rich 
 in oil. All this means a source of supply for 
 oil-burning naval ships and for merchant-men, 
 gasolene for automobiles and motor-boats, lubri- 
 cants for countless shafts hum.ming in industry. 
 If the war has taught no moral lesson and given 
 us no political instruction, it has surely shown 
 the overwhelming importance of four things — 
 wheat, coal, iron, petroleum. 
 
 Thus, there arises the same sort of condition 
 as that which has troubled the political system of 
 Europe for a generation. From this condition 
 arise a series of questions : Does the flag follow 
 the dollar ? How far shall we allow ourselves to 
 be imperialistic in politics by sending the flag to 
 protect capital invested in what are called the 
 backward nations ? Can we allow foreign nations 
 to obtain safety for invested capital by using 
 their fleets ? Can we allow our own Government 
 to use like methods ? May we ourselves use any 
 or all means, but must we lay the heavy hand of 
 Monroe on a European Government that would 
 follow our example ? With the best of intentions 
 and with sincere desire to preserve peace, we are 
 still faced with perplexities.
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 127 
 
 To make matters more puzzling still, we have 
 to do not alone with foreign investments, but 
 with foreign companies and foreign individuals, 
 actually owning and managing vast properties ; 
 it is not simply a question of investment by 
 foreigners in the domestic enterprises of a backward 
 State ; the enterprises are British or German or 
 American, and are managed by resident foreigners. 
 The industries of Guatemala, for example, are 
 largely in German hands. It is declared that it 
 is financially a German colony, inasmuch as 
 80 per cent, of the capital is German. Of the 
 total wealth of Mexico about 40 per cent, is 
 said to be owned by citizens of the United States, 
 about 13 per cent, by Englishmen, 7 per cent, 
 by Frenchmen, and the most of the remaining 
 by Mexicans. ' 
 
 In trying to reach some solution of these 
 problems, America has taken notable steps in 
 the last twenty years. Presented chronologic- 
 ally they appear as actual developments of an 
 established and clear-cut policy. Although the 
 action taken in the case of Cuba, Santo Domingo, 
 Haiti, and Nicaragua are important illustrations 
 of this developing policy, I need not refer to them 
 again, but will take up the announcements of 
 principles. In a series of messages and discus- 
 sions. President Roosevelt presented a number 
 of very important assertions, some of which, we 
 may see, do not contradict but help to support 
 the principles and ethics of doctrine of President 
 Wilson, which I am soon to discuss, (i) We
 
 128 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 must watch over the approaches to the canal. 
 (2) We shall interfere with the Latin-American 
 States only in case of real need. (3) We shall 
 not use the Monroe Doctrine to excuse aggran- 
 dizement on our part. We must try to convince 
 the nations of the Western Continent that no 
 just and orderly Government has anything to fear 
 from us. (4) We do not guarantee a State against 
 merited punishment, but punishment must not 
 result in taking of territory by any non-American 
 Power. (5) The Doctrine is a long step toward 
 the peace of the world. " During the past 
 century other influences have established per- 
 manence and independence of the smaller States 
 of Europe." Through the Monroe Doctrine we 
 hope to be able to secure a like permanence here. 
 
 (6) The United States may be forced by the 
 Monroe Doctrine, in case of flagrant wrong- 
 doing or the impotence of an American State, 
 to exercise international police power in America. 
 
 (7) The Monroe Doctrine is the cardinal feature 
 of American foreign policy, and we must back 
 it up with a strong navy. (8) We do not intend 
 to interfere abroad, though not without sympathy 
 for unhappy peoples.^ Mr. Root, whose influence 
 in the United States is very strong, has on various 
 occasions interpreted the Monroe Doctrine in a 
 spirit of liberality and respect for the rights of 
 smaller States of the Western Hemisphere. 
 
 ^ I am indebted to Professor Hart's Monroe Doctrine for 
 condensed quotations from Mr. Roosevelt, which I have used 
 as the basis of the above statements.
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 129 
 
 The United States delegates to the Pan- 
 American Conference at Rio de Janeiro, in 1906, 
 were instructed by Secretary Root that it had 
 been the long-estabHshed policy of the United 
 States not to use armed force for the collection 
 of ordinary contract debts due to its citizens by 
 another Government : " It seems to us that the 
 practice is injurious in its general effect upon 
 the relations of nations and upon the welfare of 
 weak and disordered States, whose development 
 ought to be encouraged in the interests of civil- 
 ization ; that it offers frequent temptation to 
 bullying and oppression and to unnecessary and 
 unjustifiable warfare." The next year this prin- 
 ciple was advocated by the American delegates at 
 The Hague Conference and it was at that time 
 formally adopted. The contracting nations thus 
 agreed not to use armed force for the recovery of 
 debts claimed from the Government of one 
 country by another ; but the abstention from 
 force was not to apply in case of refusal to arbi- 
 trate or failure to submit to the award of arbitra- 
 tion. This doctrine or principle, commonly 
 called the Drago Doctrine, was first formulated 
 by Luis M. Drago of Argentina ; ^ but it is not 
 too much to say that, though coming originally 
 from the Argentine, it found its place in the 
 accepted public law of the world largely because 
 
 ^ The doctrine originally advocated by Drago was some- 
 what more drastic or comprehensive than it was in the form 
 adopted at The Hague. 
 
 K
 
 130 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 of advocacy by the United States ; it was a child 
 or a protege of the Monroe Doctrine. 
 
 By 191 3, an enlarged, clarified, and humanized 
 Monroe Doctrine had begun to take very definite 
 shape, a doctrine which did not contradict the 
 old doctrine of Monroe, but was, as far as the 
 affairs of the Western Hemisphere were con- 
 cerned, and as far as inter-American relations 
 went, explicit in its statements, frank and not 
 ungenerous. Geographically the doctrine was, 
 perhaps, more limited in practical application 
 than it had been before ; for unless conditions 
 have greatly changed, as they indeed may have 
 already changed because of the German danger 
 in Brazil, the Monroe Doctrine had come, by 191 3, 
 to be chiefly concerned with the area north of the 
 Equator, the area of the Gulf and the Caribbean. 
 The centre of interest was the canal. But the 
 mere shifting of the centre of gravity toward 
 the region of the canal was by no means all. 
 Based on the intrinsic morality of the old Mon- 
 roe Doctrine and attached to it, were now certain 
 positive statements not only of policy but of 
 international ethics. We have seen that the old 
 Doctrine did not pledge America to refrain from 
 any sort of activity in the New World, though 
 possibly its moral implications involved considera- 
 tion for the rights of other nations. We have also 
 seen that the Doctrine fell in the course of time 
 to be only a statement of fact which must be 
 accepted by other nations ; it fell to be a state- 
 ment of fact that the American Continents were
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 131 
 
 our business and not Europe's, and that what 
 we did here within our sphere of influence (Olney 
 said " sovereignty ") was nobody's concern but 
 our own. 
 
 As I have said, before 191 3 there was the be- 
 ginning of something else ; preparing to defend 
 American States against acquisition of territory 
 by European Powers, we went further — we 
 stated our objection to the use of force to collect 
 debts ; we helped in writing the modified Drago 
 Doctrine into the international law of the world. 
 We went still further ; we were developing the 
 reverse side of the Doctrine, bringing out, not 
 so much the side of the shield that faced Europe 
 and warded her off, as the side that faced the 
 Western Hemisphere. The Doctrine became 
 quite as much a principle of inter-American 
 relations as a warning to the rest of the world ; 
 it began to show a comprehension of duty and 
 responsibility ; it was dimly seen to embody a 
 conception of ethical internationalism to be ap- 
 plied in all inter-American relationships ; it was 
 coming to be looked upon as a guaranty of peace 
 and good neighbourhood within half the world. 
 
 It remained for Mr. Wilson not only to sum 
 up in words the content of the rejuvenated, 
 cleansed, and developed Doctrine, but to live 
 up to it in conduct ; and more than this, it 
 remained for him to assert, not so much the 
 negative and prohibitory phase of the Doctrine 
 as the newer, positive, and affirmative side ; to 
 declare that we are interested in our neighbours'
 
 132 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 development, not merely free from intent to 
 injure them. In an address before the Southern 
 Commercial Congress held at Mobile, Alabama, 
 October 27, 191 3, President Wilson said — 
 
 " What these States are going to see, there- 
 fore, is an emancipation from the subordi- 
 nation which has been inevitable to foreign 
 enterprise, and an assertion of the splendid 
 character v\^hich, in spite of these difficulties, 
 they have again and again been able to demon- 
 strate. The dignity, the courage, the self- 
 possession, the respect of the Latin-American 
 States, their achievements in the face of all 
 these adverse circumstances, deserve nothing 
 but the admiration and applause of the world. 
 They have had harder bargains driven with 
 them in the matter of loans than any other 
 peoples in the world. Interest has been 
 exacted of them that was not exacted of 
 anybody else, because the risk was said to 
 be greater, and then securities were taken 
 that destroyed the risks. An admirable ar- 
 rangement for those who were forcing the 
 terms 1 . . . 
 
 " Comprehension must be the soil in which 
 shall grow all the fruits of friendship, because 
 there is a reason and a compulsion lying behind 
 all this which are dearer than anything else 
 to the thoughtful men of America ; I mean 
 the development of constitutional liberty in 
 the world. Human rights, national integrity.
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 133 
 
 and opportunity, as against material interests 
 — that, ladies and gentlemen, is the issue which 
 we now have to face. 
 
 " I want to take this occasion to say that 
 the United States will never again seek one 
 additional foot of territory by conquest. She 
 will devote herself to showing that she knows 
 how to make honourable and fruitful use of 
 the territory she has. And she must regard 
 it as one of the duties of friendship to see that 
 from no quarter are material interests made 
 superior to human liberty and national oppor- 
 tunity. I say this, not with a single thought 
 that any one will gainsay it, but merely to 
 fix in our consciousness what our real relation- 
 ship with the rest of America is. It is the 
 relationship of a family of mankind devoted 
 to the development of true constitutional 
 liberty. We know that that is the soil out of 
 which the best enterprise springs. We know 
 that this is a cause which we are making in 
 common with them because we have had to 
 make it for ourselves. . . . 
 
 " This is not America because it is rich. 
 This is not America because it has set up for 
 a great population great opportunities of 
 material prosperity. America is a name which 
 sounds in the ears of man everywhere as a 
 synonym of individual liberty. I would rather 
 belong to a poor nation that was free than to 
 a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with 
 liberty. But we shall not be poor if we love
 
 134 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 liberty, because the nation that loves liberty 
 truly sets every man free to do his best and be 
 his best ; and that means the release of all the 
 splendid energies of a great people who think 
 for themselves. A nation of employees cannot 
 be free any more than a nation of employers 
 can be. . . ." ^ 
 
 We find here, therefore, not only a positive 
 reiteration of Roosevelt's statement against 
 aggrandizement, a declaration of restraint and 
 self-abnegation on our part — and let us notice 
 that this expression of our intention to refrain 
 from encroachment was of essential interest to 
 the Latin-American States — but also a statement 
 of decided and affirmative interest in the actual 
 welfare of Latin America. The Wilson policy 
 was and proved to be more than mere abnega- 
 tion ; it rested on the pohtical idea that a nation 
 has got a right to shape its own destiny and 
 manage its own affairs, that its progress is of 
 benefit to civilization and not to itself alone, 
 that weaker nations must feel that they can live 
 in safety by the side of big ones, that it is the 
 duty of one nation to help another, not to crush 
 it, that capital must make way for the ethics of 
 decent pohtics and decent internationahsm, that 
 production may be aided by external capital, but 
 that economic exploitation, so easily degenerating 
 
 ^ It was Montesquieu, I believe, who said that the wealth 
 of a nation depends not so much on the fertility of the soil 
 as on the freedom of the inhabitants.
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 135 
 
 into plunder, shall not be sanctioned or supported 
 by the political authority of an external govern- 
 ment, above all not by our own, that economic 
 burdens should be eased rather than augmented, 
 that the basis of peace and peaceful industry is 
 good faith and morality and not the mailed fist 
 or shining armour — all of which is not far remote 
 from George Washington's statement that honesty 
 is the best policy between nations as it is in 
 private life. 
 
 Some of you may say that President Wilson 
 in dealing with Mexico did not live up to this 
 code of ethics. He did, it is true, refuse to 
 recognize Huerta ; he did, if you insist, use 
 influence, not to say force, against him. The 
 reason is plain — did it conflict with his theory ? 
 He was convinced, I suppose, that if there ever 
 was to be order and sobriety in Mexico, the 
 government ought not lightly to pass from one 
 carnivorous dictatorship to another. He did not 
 believe that the dagger was the proper warrant 
 of election. He saw that Huerta's dictatorship 
 meant further conscienceless exploitation by 
 foreign capital or absorption of the remnants 
 of Mexican wealth. He was unwilling that 
 Huerta, by achieving success, should give aid 
 and comfort to other thirsty usurpers in the 
 Latin-American countries. He believed that 
 there was hope of Mexico's struggling through 
 revolution into at least the paler sunlight of 
 self-government. 
 
 But if Wilson's refusal to acknowledge Huerta
 
 136 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 was interference, his patient waiting was the 
 reverse. Under savage verbal assault at home 
 and under sharp relentless criticism, he refused to 
 do more than watch and wait. Our Government 
 refused to be driven into war, sorely as we were 
 pressed.^ He knew that there might be no end 
 to it ; he must have seen that most of the acri- 
 mony in the United States would be made use 
 of by capitalistic interests, and that if we made 
 war on Mexico we shattered the whole fabric of 
 the new, humane, peaceful, generous, hopeful 
 Monroe Doctrine and would heap up a new 
 mountain of Latin-American suspicions. He saw 
 that a human problem — a problem of ignorance 
 and poverty — cannot be swept away by war, 
 unless you treat a nation the way the Turks 
 treated the Armenians by simply carrying war to 
 the ultimate in extermination, or unless you 
 treat them by the methods we are told are now 
 directed against the Jugo-Slavs that stand in the 
 way of triumphant Pan-Germanism. Possibly 
 few persons saw that President Wilson, in hand- 
 ling the Monroe Doctrine and in dealing with 
 the Mexican trouble, was expressing only those 
 principles which for fifteen months he has held 
 
 ^ Though the President was accused of undermining American 
 character by his readiness to deal patiently with the Mexican 
 trouble, instead of sending in an army and " cleaning the 
 whole thing up," there have been few occasions in history 
 disclosing more real bravery, as distinguished from pugilism, 
 than did his refusal to be stampeded and his holding our army 
 in leash, after it had actually entered Mexico to punish or 
 drive back the forces of Villa.
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 137 
 
 out to the world at war. Perhaps his refraining 
 so long for advising war against Germany was 
 due to a clear perception that the world had 
 not yet reached a stage of thought and feeling 
 in which the principles of the new Monroe 
 Doctrine would find comfortable companionship. 
 Whether this be the case or not, we did go into 
 war at a time when the world, outside of the mili- 
 tary clique of Germany, was in a mood to listen, 
 at a time indeed when the nations had reached, 
 through experience, a place in which they were 
 ready to accept the doctrines of the White House. 
 What, then, is the Monroe Doctrine in its 
 newer applications ? What in its wider scope 
 does it involve and imply ? We must turn to 
 President Wilson for clear statement. In his 
 famous speech of January 22, 191 7, a speech in 
 which he doubtless sought to draw out European 
 opinion and find out just how far that opinion, 
 especially among the Allies, would support Ameri- 
 can liberal judgment, he used the phrase (I think 
 the ambiguous, perhaps unhappy, phrase in an 
 otherwise felicitous argument) — " peace without 
 victory." A careful reading of the message 
 indicates that he did not mean, in my judgment, 
 that no one must win ; but that the peace with all 
 the usual accompaniments of conquest must not 
 be forced on a conquered people ; if the war 
 brought victory to one side, the other, in the 
 peace, must not be treated with humiliation and 
 heart-breaking cruelty. The peace must be be- 
 tween equals, not between a superior victor and
 
 138 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 a vanquished inferior. All the world save 
 Mitteleuropa has not come to that. " Only a 
 peace between equals," he goes on to say, " can 
 last ; only a peace the very principle of which is 
 equality and a common participation in a com- 
 mon benefit. . . . The equality of nations upon 
 which peace must be founded, if it is to last, 
 must be an equality of rights. . . . Right must be 
 based upon the common strength, not upon the 
 individual strength, of the nations upon whose 
 concert peace will depend. . . . No peace can 
 last or ought to last, which does not recognize 
 that governments derive all their just powers 
 from the consent of the governed, and that no 
 right anywhere exists to hand people about from 
 sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were pro- 
 perty. ... I am proposing, as it were, that the 
 nations should with one accord adopt the doc- 
 trine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the 
 world ; that no nation should seek to extend its 
 policy over any other nation or people, but that 
 every people should be left free to determine its 
 own policy, its own way of development, un- 
 hindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along 
 with the great and the powerful. ... I am pro- 
 posing that nations henceforth avoid entangling 
 alliances which would draw them into competi- 
 tions of power, catch them in a net of intrigue 
 and selfish rivalry and disturb their own affairs 
 with influences intruded from without. . . . 
 I am proposing government by the consent of 
 the governed ; that freedom of the seas which
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 139 
 
 in international conference after conference repre- 
 sentatives of the United States have urged with 
 the eloquence of those who are the convinced 
 disciples of liberty ; and that moderation of 
 armaments which makes of armies and navies 
 a power for order merely, not an instrument of 
 aggression or of selfish violence." ^ 
 
 President Wilson took up bodily and placed in 
 the new Monroe Doctrine, which he wished to 
 be the doctrine of the whole world, the sentences 
 which John Quincy Adams wrote and which 
 were not included in Monroe's message, prob- 
 ably because Monroe did not wish so full a 
 statement, or because Adams on reflection did 
 not think it was wise to lay down so advanced 
 a statement. Those sentences I have already 
 given, but they will bear repetition in this 
 
 ^ In the spring of 191 8, a year after we entered the war, the 
 President emphatically declared that inasmuch as Germany 
 relied on force and wished to try issues by force alone, force 
 she should have. I do not understand by this, however, that 
 he has given up the fundamental thesis of his " peace without 
 victory " speech. It would be foolish in the extreme to go 
 into a war or expect another nation to go into war with the 
 intention of not winning a victory. He does presumably still 
 believe that, though war must have its victories, only a peace 
 between equals can last. The great purpose of the war is to 
 defeat Germany so thoroughly that haughty swaggering mili- 
 tarism shall no longer clank its sword and flash its "shining 
 armour," and that the Government of Germany will be suffi- 
 ciently wise and humble to see that right must be based upon 
 the common strength of the nations of the world. Even a 
 dictated peace, which I hope will come, will be a real and 
 lasting peace only if based on justice.
 
 140 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 connection : " (i) That the institutions of Govern- 
 ment, to be lawful, must be pacific, that is, 
 founded upon the consent, and hy the agreement 
 of those who are governed ; and (2) that each 
 Nation is the exclusive judge of the Government 
 best suited to itself, and that no other Nation 
 can justly interfere by force to impose a different 
 Government upon it. The first of these prin- 
 ciples may be designated as the principle of 
 Liberty, the second as the principle of national In- 
 dependence — they are both principles of Peacg and 
 of Good Will to Men." We cannot be sure that 
 all the implications of these words were explicitly 
 in Adams' mind ; but they are strikingly like the 
 principles which President Wilson has announced. 
 I have no reason for thinking that the President 
 borrowed his ideas from Adams ; he simply, in 
 a notable crisis of the world's history, gave 
 utterance, as did Adams, to the fundamental 
 ethics of American democracy. 
 
 It thus appears that government by consent 
 is the only lawful government ; moreover, peace 
 and liberty appear to be mutually supporting. 
 Until, therefore, every nation of the world adopts 
 the principle of democracy in its internal organ- 
 ization, there can be little hope for peace between 
 nations. If this be true, it follows that all nations 
 desiring peace have a real interest in the internal 
 organization of every nation, and that internal 
 autocracy menaces the peace of the outside 
 world. But if every nation must have this interest, 
 and if autocracy by its very existence imperils
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 141 
 
 the world's peace, we appear to have discovered 
 a principle at variance with the belief that each 
 nation must be the final judge of the government 
 best suited to itself. How far Mr. Adams or 
 Mr. Wilson reconciled these contradictions, or 
 unified the two statements, I cannot say. It 
 seems, however, that Mr. Wilson believes in 
 more than the mere likelihood of covert attack 
 by militaristic autocracy upon the outside world. 
 He sees that democracy and autocracy are, by 
 their very natures, warring one against the 
 other ; that two inherently antithetical atti- 
 tudes toward life and its responsibilities are in 
 conflict in time of peace ; that a method of 
 internal government which is based on the 
 principle of dictation from above and not on 
 response from below, which is based on the 
 theory that the few must rule and the rest obey 
 and toil, is, by the law and the logic of its mis- 
 named soul, prompted to disregard the rights of 
 others whose property it covets, and is prompted 
 to seize and to dictate, not to respect the privi- 
 leges and the free will of weaker neighbours. A 
 nation that is ruled internally by a select and 
 " superior " few, and this means a nation resting 
 its government on the subjection of the many, 
 will belie its own principles, if in its relations with 
 other nations it co-operates on the basis of equality 
 and recognizes the self-determination of peoples. 
 We may find, then, certain contradictions or 
 apparent contradictions in the words of these 
 two statesmen, although I ought to confess that
 
 142 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 I may be carrying their sentiments forward to 
 conclusions which they would not be quite ready 
 to accept. In reality, we may in this war stop 
 short of a demand that Germany abandon the 
 practices and forms of autocratic government ; 
 but this war has shown what perhaps John Quincy 
 Adams saw a century ago, that only a government 
 resting on consent can by its own philosophy be 
 a lover of real peace ; and, if the world is to have 
 real and abiding peace, it must be freed from 
 the menace of a government resting on force 
 and on the legal theory that one or a few have 
 the right to control the rest. If this war does 
 not banish autocracy from Germany, one of two 
 possible conditions will exist after the war : 
 (i) Other nations will become in essence auto- 
 cratic and carry the un-ethical notions of forceful 
 government ; (2) the world will be divided into 
 two camps with hostile philosophies of life, each 
 endangering the existence of the other ; for 
 democracy and autocracy continually cry out 
 against the fundamental and elemental prin- 
 ciples of the other. If Germany is sufficiently 
 beaten to recognize the ethics of liberty, the 
 world will become essentially harmonious, as far 
 as the basic philosophy of national life can make 
 it so. There is, of course, one other possible 
 condition, and that is that Germany, though 
 still retaining autocracy and her malodorous 
 philosophy, be reduced to a state of impotence ; 
 such was the meaning of Mr. Balfour's declara- 
 tion that Germany must be powerless or free.
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 143 
 
 John Quincy Adams, whom scholars now 
 recognize as the author of the Monroe Doctrine, 
 if any one man is entitled to that distinction, 
 and Woodrow Wilson, who has proposed the 
 Monroe Doctrine of the world, beheve in democ- 
 racy of international relations.- Both have faith 
 in justice and friendly interest and reciprocal 
 respect as the basis of peace of developing civi- 
 lization. Both repudiate brute force cfs the 
 proper means of deciding questions of right. 
 Both consider national independence and free- 
 dom the basis of peace and good-will. 
 
 There is an appearance of paradox, not to say 
 contradiction, in Mr. Wilson's standing before 
 the world as the champion of nationalism and 
 of national self-determination, when he is also 
 leading the world to a position of actual inter- 
 nationalism — the internationalism of friendly 
 co-operation. He is, seemingly, preaching the 
 doctrine of self-contained and self-determining 
 nationality, when we in America have faith in 
 the disappearance of partitions between nation- 
 alities, in the sinking of racial barriers, and in 
 the amalgamation of men of many tongues. But 
 faith helps us to dissolve this paradox ; for if a 
 nationality is unpersecuted, " left free to deter- 
 mine its own policy, its own way of development, 
 unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid," it is sure 
 to lose its sense of isolation ; it is sure under the 
 influence of commerce, of thought, in a word 
 of modern civilization, to find its contacts and to 
 feel itself a portion and only a portion of the
 
 144 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 great world. The old fable in the school reader 
 about the wind and the sun, who had entered 
 into a wager as to which could the more quickly 
 make the traveller lay aside his cloak, is of peren- 
 nial appositeness. Let the small nation bask in 
 the sun of safety, unthreatened and unafraid, 
 and it will soon lay aside its cloak and partake 
 willingly in the labours of a complicated and 
 closely interwoven civilization. 
 
 Whatever else we may say — and here I return 
 definitely to the Monroe Doctrine — ^America is 
 now able to enter the court of the world with 
 clean hands. Thanks to the Mobile speech and 
 the rectitude of twenty years behind it, and thanks 
 to our policies with poor distracted Mexico, we 
 can stand unabashed as we ask the nations of the 
 world to throw aside the whole baneful system 
 of greed, lust, and exploitation. To ask Europe 
 to adopt the Monroe Doctrine of the world is 
 not the plea of a wolf in sheep's clothing. 
 
 To apply the new Monroe Doctrine, based on 
 the principle that liberty and peace go hand in 
 hand, and that autocracy, war, and slavery are 
 intimates in the field and in the council chamber 
 — to apply the new doctrine in the world is sure 
 to be difficult in practice, though simple in 
 theory. We should despair, indeed, were it not 
 that the free Press of Europe applauds and, it 
 seems, understands the significance of it all. We 
 should despair unless we also saw more or less 
 acquiescence in the belief that a lasting peace 
 must be a peace of peoples, not a scheme of govern-
 
 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 145 
 
 ments. We should have shght ground for hope 
 unless we knew that fresh liberal forces are awake 
 and active in the souls and minds of tens of 
 millions of European common people. 
 
 Let us remember, then, that the Monroe 
 Doctrine of to-day is primarily not the Americas 
 for the Americans, although it probably does still 
 include objection to the extension of European 
 authority in the Western Hemisphere. It means 
 a principle of decent and humane relationship 
 between nations. It means not beating down the 
 weak, not even sucking out the life-blood of the 
 helpless by commercial profiteering. It means 
 the opposite of Prussian Politik. 
 
 There is basis for hope that, in the forthcoming 
 arrangement of Europe, peace will recognize 
 national liberty, because people believe that 
 liberty will maintain peace. It is a strange fact 
 that we in America fear or have feared that the 
 Monroe Doctrine might be lost as a result of our 
 entering the war. Naturally its safety depends 
 on our winning the war, and above all on our 
 winning the principles for which we fight. If 
 war ends in need of new armaments, in the per- 
 petuation of stealthy diplomacy, then, even if 
 Germany is militarily defeated, we must hasten 
 to put on the buckler ; we may be physically 
 victorious, morally vanquished ; we must hasten 
 to protect the Western Hemisphere as our baili- 
 wick and within it strive to live up to our prin- 
 ciples, if we can, in the face of a world whose 
 ethics will be oozy with suspicion and envy and
 
 146 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 commercialism. But we fight to end all this, to 
 supplant suspicion by good faith, to put trust- 
 worthy documents in the place of scraps of 
 paper, to assure the right of small nations to 
 live. And if we succeed, the Monroe Doctrine 
 need no longer be defensive and provincial ; it 
 need no longer be merely a watchword of our 
 power or evidence of our distrust. More than 
 ever before it will be, if we succeed, necessary to 
 wipe from it all contamination of selfish greed 
 and ambition for conquest ; for the world will 
 have accepted it ; the Monroe Doctrine will 
 have been extended across the ocean and finally 
 have worsted, on the battle-ground of autocracy, 
 the political system against which Monroe pro- 
 nounced his principles one hundred years ago. 
 And notice, too, that if the Monroe Doctrine 
 originally meant that the United States must be 
 free from the entangled skein of European Poli- 
 tik ; it proposes now that we win assured freedom 
 by going across the water to help in destroying 
 the whole system of force, suspicion, and intrigue 
 to which Germany still cHngs, and to set up 
 in its place an appeal to the tribunal of public 
 intelHgence.
 
 THE BACKGROUND OF AMERICAN 
 FEDERALISM 
 
 The purpose of this paper is to make plain two 
 facts : first, that the essential quahties of American 
 federal organization were largely the product of 
 the practices of the old British empire as it existed 
 before 1764; second, that the discussions of the 
 generation from the French and Indian war to 
 the adoption of the federal Constitution, and, 
 more particularly, the discussions in the ten or 
 twelve years before independence, were over the 
 problem of imperial organization. The centre 
 of this problem was the difficulty of recognizing 
 federalism ; and, though there was great difficulty 
 in grasping the principle, the idea of federalism 
 went over from the old empire, through discussion 
 into the Constitution of the United States. By 
 federaHsm is meant, of course, that system of 
 political order in which powers of government are 
 separated and distinguished and in which these 
 powers are distributed among governments, each 
 government having its quota of authority and 
 each its distinct sphere of activity.^ 
 
 ^ This paper is limited to the subject stated above. It does 
 not pretend to assert or deny economic influences. It confines 
 itself to the intellectual problem of imperial order. Only one 
 other subject vies with this in importance — the problem of 
 making real the rights of the individual under government. 
 
 147
 
 148 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 We all remember very well that, until about 
 thirty years ago, it was common to think of the 
 United States Constitution as if it were " stricken 
 off in a given time by the brain and purpose of 
 man." About that time there began a careful 
 study of the background of constitutional pro- 
 visions and especially of the specific make-up of 
 the institutions provided for by the instrument. •"• 
 It is probably fair to say that the net result of 
 this investigation was the discovery that the 
 Constitution was in marked degree founded on 
 the state constitutions, and that they in turn were 
 largely a formulation of colonial institutions and 
 practices ; the strong influence of English political 
 principles and procedure was apparent, though 
 commonly that influence had percolated through 
 colonial governments and experiences. 
 
 In such studies as these just mentioned, we do 
 not find, nor have recent works furnished us, 
 any historical explanation of the central principle 
 of American federalism.* And still, one may 
 well hesitate to give the historical explanation, 
 because, when stated, it appears as obvious as 
 it is significant. No better occasion than this, 
 however, is likely to arise for acknowledging the 
 fact that out of the practices of the old empire, 
 an empirical empire, an opportunistic empire, an 
 
 ^ The first of these studies, as far as I know, was Alexander 
 Johnston's " First Century of the Constitution " in the New 
 Princeton Review, IV (1887), 175. 
 
 2 One of the books which does in some degree recognize the 
 nature of the Revolutionary discussion is Holland, Iniperium 
 et Liber tas.
 
 AMERICAN FEDERALISM 149 
 
 empire which to-day is seeking formulation in 
 law or in public acknowledgment of institutional 
 co-ordination, an empire which the Englishmen 
 even of a century and a half ago did not understand 
 — no better time than now to acknowledge that 
 to the practices of English imperiahsm we owe 
 the very essence of American federalism. It is a 
 striking fact that there are two great empires in 
 the world : one the British empire based on oppor- 
 tunism and on the principles of Edmund Burke ; 
 the other the American empire based on law, 
 the law of imperial organization. The first of 
 these, an empire without imperial law, was pro- 
 foundly influenced by the experiences of the 
 American Revolution and by slowly developing 
 liberaHsm ; the other — an empire with a funda- 
 mental law of co-ordination, also influenced by 
 its experiences and by Revolutionary discussion 
 — institutionalized and legalized, with some 
 modifications and additions, the practices of the 
 pre-revolutionary imperial system of Britain.^ 
 
 If we go back to the old empire as it was, let 
 us say in 1760, we find that it was a composite 
 empire, not simple and centralized. We are not 
 speaking of any theory of the law of the empire 
 but of its actual institutions and their practical 
 operation. 
 
 ■^ So successful has been the empire of opportunism, of opera- 
 tion and co-operation based on understandings, not on fixed 
 law, that we find ourselves looking with some misgiving on 
 discussions now in progress at Westminster, lest, through well- 
 intentioned effort to reach definiteness, fluidity be changed to 
 rigidity.
 
 I50 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 First : The active instrument or authority of 
 imperial government was the crown. It operated 
 of course most immediately and effectively in 
 the royal colonies. It operated by the appoint- 
 ment of some officials, by instructions, and by 
 disallowance of colonial acts. The generalization 
 is probably just, that instruction and disallowance 
 were exercised chiefly for essentially nonlocal, 
 imperial purposes, the maintenance of the charac- 
 ter and aim of the empire. The process of review 
 of cases appealed from the colonies can probably 
 be similarly classified — its operation was for homo- 
 geneity in part but substantially for imperial 
 purposes. This central authority of the empire 
 had charge of foreign affairs, navy and army, war 
 and peace, subordinate military authority being 
 left to the individual colonies.^ It managed the 
 post office ; it was beginning to take charge of 
 Indian affairs and trade with the Indian tribes ; 
 it had charge of the back lands and of crown lands 
 within the limit of the colonies ; it was preparing 
 to take in hand the building up of new colonies 
 (our territorial system) ; it exercised executive 
 power in carrying out the legislation of Parliament 
 which was chiefly concerned with trade and 
 navigation. 
 
 Second : ParHament had legislated little if at 
 all for strictly local internal affairs of the colonies. 
 
 1 Working out the principle of federalism in military affairs 
 was a big problem in the French and Indian war, in the decade 
 before independence, in the Revolution, in the Federal Con- 
 vention, in the War of 1812, in the Civil War, in the Congress 
 of 1916, in the War of 1917.
 
 AMERICAN FEDERALISM 151 
 
 If we omit for the moment acts of trade and navi- 
 gation, we should find the act making colonial 
 real estate chargeable with debts, the post office, 
 the Naturahzation Act of 1740, the Bubble Act, 
 the act against the land bank, the act against paper 
 money. Each one of these acts was of imperial 
 scope or nature, because it was directed against 
 an evil of more than local extent, or because, as 
 in the case of the post office, it was of more than 
 local interest. The acts of trade and navigation 
 were in some instances, for example the act against 
 the smelting of iron, a somewhat rude intrusion 
 upon the sphere of local action ; but to see these 
 things properly, we must associate them together 
 with the general policy of mercantilism, and see 
 them as a part of a system, not always wisely 
 developed, of making a self-sustaining empire. 
 On the whole. Parliament, as was perfectly 
 natural, had to a very marked extent interested 
 itself in regulation of trade ; it was perfectly 
 natural that the empire as far as Parliament was 
 concerned should have been largely a commercial 
 empire ; the part played by mercantilistic doc- 
 trine in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 
 made such parliamentary interests and activities 
 inevitable.^ 
 
 1 I have left out of consideration the question of the absorp- 
 tion by the colonies of common law and the acceptance of 
 legislation modifying common law, especially criminal law. It 
 is a big and complicated question. Limited space does not 
 permit the treatment. I content myself with a general picture 
 of the make-up of the empire, which I believe is substantially 
 correct. It is also noteworthy that there was in the empire
 
 152 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 Third : The colonies managed their own " in- 
 ternal police," some of them under charters, all 
 by governments in which there were representa- 
 tive assemblies. They levied taxes for local 
 purposes, and voluntarily contributed, after a 
 wholesome or a ramshackle manner, to the defence 
 of the empire. They managed local trade, and 
 in short did the thousand and one things — some- 
 times under pressure from the representatives of 
 the royal prerogative — that concerned the daily 
 life of the colonist. 
 
 Any one even slightly familiar with American 
 constitutional system will see at once that to a 
 very marked degree we have here the distribution 
 of powers characteristic of American federalism. 
 In fact if we add to the powers of the central 
 authority in the old empire the single power to 
 obtain money by direct or indirect taxation imme- 
 diately from the colonists for imperial purposes, 
 we have almost exactly the scheme of distribution 
 of our own constitutional system.^ Of course 
 
 national or imperial and local citizenship, and that naturalization 
 by colonial authorities was after 1740 under imperial law. 
 
 ^ The reader may object that Congaress can now provide for 
 standards of weights and measures, patents, and copyrights. 
 He might point out, possibly with justice, that coining money 
 and regulating the value thereof did not belong in the old 
 empire to the central authority ; but I leave the old practice 
 to justify my assertion and refer again in passing to the act 
 against paper money. The bankruptcy power, as a part of 
 the general power of our central government, probably can 
 be traced back with certainty at least to colonial conditions, 
 and the Bubble Act and its extension to the colonies must not 
 be forgotten.
 
 AMERICAN FEDERALISM 153 
 
 there had to be found a thorough working legal 
 basis and a legal method of operation. The legal 
 basis was found when the constitutional Con- 
 vention of 1787 declared that the Constitution 
 should be law. The operation of the central 
 government directly upon its own citizens, a 
 most important quality of our own federalism, 
 probably came in part from the old empire, 
 but was distinctly worked out in the debates of 
 the Convention. 
 
 If any one wishes to criticize unfavourably 
 some detail of the scheme of empire which has 
 just been sketched, he will still scarcely deny that 
 Britain had a working federal empire by the middle 
 of the eighteenth century. If Great Britain, in 
 1760, had reached out and said, " this is the law 
 of the empire ; thus the system is formed," she 
 would have seen herself as the most considerable 
 member of a federal state based distinctly on law 
 and not on practice alone. If Britain by a formal 
 constitution could have formulated the empire 
 she had, if the imperial order could have been 
 frozen, petrified, in the form that time had made 
 for it, the British empire would have been legally 
 a federal empire. But though she did not, she 
 made her contribution ; her imperial history had 
 selected and set apart the particular and the 
 general, according to a scheme which was of 
 lasting significance in the development of Ameri- 
 can imperial order. On that general scheme of 
 distribution the Constitution of the United States 
 was founded.
 
 154 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 Let us now discuss this subject more in detail 
 and with some consideration for chronological 
 sequence, with some deference, that is to say, to 
 the order and time in which events occurred and 
 arguments were put forth. The scheme of im- 
 perial order presented by the Albany Congress is 
 so well known, that it does not need extended 
 comment ; it is of interest as a plan for redistribu- 
 tion of powers in certain essential particulars and 
 it is of lasting significance as an effort to select 
 certain things of extra-colony rather than intra- 
 colony importance, those things which needed 
 general control by a colonial representative body. 
 It tried chiefly to solve the problem of imperial 
 order as far as that centred in the need of securing 
 men and money for imperial security ; and for 
 the time the plan failed. 
 
 This matter of imperial security, augmented in 
 weight by the experiences of the war, became the 
 centre of dispute in the decade or so after the 
 peace of 1763. Could England by parliamentary 
 enactment secure money for imperial defence ? 
 While this question was the centre of dispute, the 
 discussion was soon narrowed, or, if you like, 
 broadened, to this : Did the colonies, as constitu- 
 ent parts of the whole, possess certain indefeasible 
 legal rights and especially the right to hold on to 
 their own purse-strings ? The dispute was nar- 
 rowed because it came to be confined to the field 
 of theory ; it was not a question as to whether 
 Parliament could get money from the colonies 
 but whether they would acknowledge the abstract
 
 AMERICx^N FEDERALISM 155 
 
 legal right to get it. The dispute was broadened, 
 because it involved the whole question of inter- 
 dependence and relationship. 
 
 Any amount of argument over the theoretical 
 
 legal right to exercise sovereignty in the empire 
 
 does not get one very far. There is no great 
 
 practical value in trying to determine whether 
 
 the colonies by the principles of English law were 
 
 subject to taxation by Parliament. It may not be 
 
 amiss, however, to point out that most of this ~ 
 
 argument, as far as it seeks to make out that 
 
 Parliament did have the taxing power, whether 
 
 that argument was made in 1765 or in 191 7, has 
 
 for its basis the constitution of the island and not 
 
 that of the empire. It is largely insular argument, 
 
 based on insular experience and founded on insular 
 
 history. The unwritten constitution of the 
 
 empire is the other way, and that is just what the 
 
 men, especially the Englishmen, of a hundred 
 
 and fifty years ago could not see. They could not 
 
 think and talk imperially, when it came to a 
 
 matter of constitutional law. If the practical 
 
 working empire of 1760 had been frozen into 
 
 recognizable legal shape, the right to tax the 
 
 colonies would not have been within the legal 
 
 competence of Parliament, even as an imperial 
 
 legislature. And because the Englishmen did 
 
 not think imperially, because they did not realize 
 
 that time had wrought out for them a composite 
 
 federal empire, because they insisted on the 
 
 principle of centralization in theory, they failed 
 
 to set patiently about the task of determining
 
 156 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 some way by v/hich, while recognizing federalism 
 and colonial integrity, they could on a basis of 
 justice and consent obtain authoritatively an 
 acknowledged legal right to tax for strictly im- 
 perial purposes. Men that could not comprehend 
 federalism, who denied the possibiHty of its 
 existence, were incapable of dealing with a crisis 
 of an imperial system in which federaHsm already 
 existed.^ 
 
 Some one may say, and with considerable 
 justice, that the colonists were also incapable, 
 quite as incapable as the parliamentarian and the 
 British pamphleteer, of understanding the nature 
 of a composite empire. It long remained true, 
 as Franklin said in disgust after the failure of 
 the Albany plan : " Everybody cries, a Union 
 is absolutely necessary, but when they come to 
 the Manner and Form of the Union, their weak 
 noddles are perfectly distracted." ^ That was 
 the trouble — ^weak noddles. But, withal, the 
 
 1 This statement needs modification ; for Burke, rejecting 
 legalism, still displayed statesmanship of the highest order. 
 He resented any attempt to fossilize or ossify the empire and 
 sought to hold out the idea of parliamentary duty rather than 
 legal power. In these latter days it would be stupid to declare 
 that one must grasp and apply legal federalism if he is to deal 
 with the elements of a composite empire ; Burke's principles 
 of duty and of freedom have been proved to be the cement 
 of the British empire. But, v^ithal, it is quite plajn that the 
 statesmen of the Revolution on both sides thought there was 
 need of fixing legal authority ; and those incapable of seeing 
 the principle of distributed authority — federalism — were in a 
 bad way. 
 
 ^ Writings, ed. by A. H. Smyth, III, p. 242.
 
 AMERICAN FEDERALISM 157 
 
 idea was hard to grasp, simple as it may appear to 
 us ; and it took the discussions and experience 
 of a generation to find the manner and form of 
 imperial order, though, when they did find it, 
 it was the old scheme only in part modified, 
 representing in its method of distributing powers 
 the familiar practices of the empire.-^ 
 
 And yet it is not quite correct to say that 
 colonial noddles utterly failed. It is true that 
 the colonists often spoke as Englishmen, they 
 claimed rights as Englishmen, they, too, argued 
 on the basis of insular law ; and indeed the 
 principles of insular law were not at variance with 
 the rights which they set up as citizens in the 
 empire. But some of them went further, 
 and defended the rights of the colonies, as 
 
 ^ It is worth noticing that at a later time Franklin himself, 
 a,fter reading a considerable portion of Dickinson's Farmer's 
 Letters, is evidently at a loss ; and he at a comparatively early 
 day, about 1768, found no middle ground between complete 
 independence of the colonies and complete power of Par- 
 lianaent. Speaking of the Farmer'' s Letters, Franklin wrote : 
 *' I have read them as far as No. 8. ... I am not yet master 
 of the idea they and the New England writers hare of the 
 relation between Britain and her colonies. I know not what 
 the Boston people mean by the ' subordination ' they acknow- 
 ledge in their Assembly to Parliament, while they deny its 
 powers to make laws for them, nor what bound the Farmer 
 sets to the power he acknowledges in Parliament to ' regulate 
 the trade of the colon,ies,' it being difhcult to draw lines 
 between duties for regulation and those for revenue ; and if 
 the Parliament is to be the judge, it seems to me that estab- 
 lishing such principles of distinction will amount to little." 
 Quoted in note in Memoirs of the Historical Society of Penn., 
 XIV, 281.
 
 158 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 distinguished from the rights of Enghshmen ; thev 
 defended, to use later phraseology, states rights 
 as distinguished from individual rights ; they 
 argued from the structure of the empire rather 
 than from the principles which aim to protect 
 the individual from governmental wrong. As 
 far as they did this, they grasped the nature of an 
 imperial system in which the outlying portions 
 had their own indefeasible share, legal share, of 
 political authority. 
 
 If there were space to examine critically the 
 whole mass of constitutional arguments, we should 
 see a groping after the idea of classification of 
 powers, and on the other hand the emphatic 
 declaration that to deny to a government the right 
 to make any particular law or any special kind of 
 laws is to deny all power and authority — govern- 
 ment must have full sovereign power or none. 
 In examining some of the materials throwing 
 light on the nature of the arguments, it will Be 
 well on the whole to exclude those assertions 
 from which we can gather only inferentially that 
 the writer or speaker grasped the principle of 
 differentiation. As we have already seen, the 
 Albany plan was distinctly based on the idea of- 
 classification and distribution. The controversy 
 of 1764 regarding the revenue act brought out 
 occasional indications that certain distinctions 
 were close at hand, if not as yet fully compre- 
 hended ; at least there was a recognition of the 
 old exercise of power over trade and an objection 
 to the newly proposed schemes of revenue. In
 
 AMERICAN FEDERALISM 159 
 
 the main, however, the American opposition at 
 that time was not clearly and precisely directed 
 against taxation because it violated a principle of 
 imperial structure, but rather because it violated 
 a principle of English personal liberty. Otis, 
 in his Rights of the Colonies Asserted, denies the 
 authority of Parliament to tax, and admits their 
 right to regulate trade ; but his argument against 
 taxation is English not imperial argument, on 
 the whole. It is probably safe to say he relied on 
 personal right rather than on the principles of 
 empire.^ 
 
 Still in these early days of 1764-5 certain 
 fundamentals did appear, even when lines were 
 not drawn with the precision of later days. 
 Dulaney recognized a supreme authority in Parlia- 
 ment to preserve the dependence of the colonies ; 
 he apoke of the subordination of the colonies, 
 which still however retained rights despite their 
 inferiority ; for " in what the Superior may 
 rightly controul, or compel, and in what the 
 Inferior ought to be at Liberty to act without 
 Controul or Compulsion, depends upon the 
 nature of the dependence, and the Degree of the 
 Subordination." ^ He suggests that a line may 
 
 ^ This interpretation of Otis is of course strengthened by 
 the fact of his belief in the representation of the colonists in 
 Parliament and his reliance on the right of a court to declare 
 an unjust act void ; but, after all, Otis did distinguish between 
 powers, and did believe in the constitutional restraints on 
 Parliament. 
 
 ^ Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the 
 British Colonies for the Purpose of raising a Revenue, by Act
 
 i6o AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 be drawn " between such Acts as are necessary, 
 or proper, for preserving or securing the Depend- 
 ence of the Colonies, and such as are not necessary 
 or proper for that very important Purpose." ^ 
 He thus clearly points to the possibility of an 
 empire managed in the large by a central authority 
 but in which the outlying parts are possessed of 
 indefeasible authority on subjects belonging of 
 right to them, subjects which do not contravene 
 the general superintending power lodged in 
 the central authority. He naturally dwells on 
 those particular exercises of authority then under 
 dispute, and declares that there is " a clear and 
 necessary Distinction between an Act imposing 
 a Tax for the single Purpose of Revenue, and those 
 Acts which have been made for the Regulation 
 of Trade, and have produced some Revenue 
 in Consequence of their Effect and Operation 
 as regulations of Trade." ^ This pamphlet of 
 Dulaney's was a statesmanlike production, and 
 contained at least the foundations for the concep- 
 tion of federalism.^ 
 
 of Parliament (London, 1766), p. 16, Tyler says that there 
 was an American edition in 1765. This I have not seen. 
 
 ••■ Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the 
 British Colonies, etc. (London, 1766), p. 17. See, for an early 
 statement of federalism, Ann Maury, Memoirs of a Huguenot 
 Family, pp. 425-6 ; letter of Maury to Fontaine, December 
 
 31, 1765. 
 
 Portions of Patrick Henry's resolutions of 1765 have the 
 federal argument. 
 
 ^ Ibid., p. 46. 
 
 * See also Stephen Hopkins, Grievances of the American 
 Colonies Candidly Examined, p. 19.
 
 AMERICAN FEDERALISM i6i 
 
 Unhappily in 1766, Franklin in his examination 
 before the committee of commons does not indulge 
 in clear and precise thinking. Had he then en- 
 larged on the character of the imperial structure, 
 and had he sharply drawn the lines of demarcation 
 between imperial superintendence and colonial 
 legal right, possibly the listening commons might 
 have understood the vital distinctions. Franklin's 
 examination admirably discloses the opportunistic 
 and nonlegalistic nature of his statesmanship. In 
 this examination he does, of course, emphasize 
 the colonial objection to revenue acts; but he 
 became hopelessly confused in discussing the basis 
 for trade regulation, and impressed on his listeners 
 that what was objectionable was internal taxation 
 as distinguished from external ; he appears to 
 have impressed this distinction so firmly, that the 
 Englishmen never lost the notion that it was 
 peculiarly dear to the American heart ; and, when 
 within a year or two external taxes were levied, 
 the English administrators were hurt in their 
 minds by the prompt rejection of their schemes. 
 It is true that Lyttleton (1766) called the atten- 
 tion of the lords to the fact that the Americans 
 made no such distinction and that it could not 
 be found in Otis' pamphlet ; ^ but the idea seems 
 to have persisted, aided probably by the loose 
 use of terms by occasional American writers. 
 
 It was partly to clear up such confusion as this 
 and to draw the line properly, that John Dickinson 
 
 ^ " Mr. Otis, their champion, scouts such a distinction." 
 Pari. Hist., XVI, col. 167. 
 M
 
 1 62 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 penned his Farmer's Letters. The thinking of 
 Dickinson was plain, straightforward and able. 
 Possibly in his first letter he enters upon inde- 
 fensible ground ; for, having in mind the effort 
 to compel the New York legislature to furnish 
 quarters for troops and thereby to incur certain 
 expense, he insists that an order to do a thing is 
 the imposition of a tax. But in no other place 
 does he become entangled in dubious assertions.-*- 
 Dickinson spoke as an imperialist, as one who saw 
 and felt the empire ; he is hardly less emphatic 
 in his declarations concerning the imperial power 
 of Parliament and the existence of a real whole of 
 which the colonies are parts, than in defending 
 the indefeasible share of empire which the colonies 
 possessed. Hitherto the colonies, save as they had 
 been restrained in trade and manufacture by 
 parliamentary legislation under the general prin- 
 ciples of mercantilism, had been regulated even 
 for purposes of empire largely by the exercise of 
 the royal prerogative. Dickinson realized the 
 necessity of parliamentary control and guidance ; 
 he saw as did Dulaney the need of a superintending 
 authority, and he openly acknowledged that it 
 lay with Parliament. It was perfectly inevitable 
 that a statesman — colonial or English — should 
 think of the control of trade as the big duty, and 
 thus Dickinson emphasized that duty and the 
 right of Parliament to direct the trade of the whole 
 
 ^ For a sharp statement of Dickinson's position of empire 
 consistent with colonial freedom — freedom of the colonies — see 
 the early parts of Letter II of the farmer's Letters.
 
 AMERICAN FEDERALISM 163 
 
 system. He saw an empire, composite and not 
 simple or centralized, with a Parliament possessed 
 of indubitable power to maintain the whole and 
 chiefly to look after the interests of the whole by 
 the regulation of trade. ^ 
 
 It was just because Dickinson was thinking 
 imperially and was doing more than to acknow- 
 ledge that Parhament might regulate trade, that 
 his words deserve especial weight. He was not 
 speaking as a disgruntled colonist merely finding 
 fault ; he was not setting up purely insular consti- 
 tutional principles ; he was not talking as a frontier 
 individualist ; he saw the existence of an imperial 
 reahty and he presented strongly certain principles 
 of imperial structure. He denied that Parhament 
 had the right to tax ; scouting the supposed 
 distinction between internal and external taxation, 
 he openly admitted the authority of Parhament 
 to regulate trade. 
 
 Taxation is an imposition for the raising of 
 revenue ; it at times seems strange, not that 
 Dickinson should have made the distinction 
 between taxation and regulation, but that men at 
 all experienced with actual practices of the empire 
 and famihar with mercantiUstic doctrine should 
 
 1 The distinction between regulation of commerce and tax- 
 ation never, I think, entirely disappeared from the colonial 
 mind, though after about 1772 some leaders came to the point 
 of openly asserting complete freedom from parliamentary con- 
 trol. See for the distinction Letter from the Massachusetts 
 House to Dennis de Berdt (London, 1770), p. 16. It is possible 
 that this letter was written earlier than 1770. I have been 
 unable to find it in the Mass. State Papers.
 
 i64 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 not have readily accepted it. That distinction 
 had been touched on before Dickinson wrote ; 
 but he made the thing so evident that men ought 
 to have been able to see it. Still it is not plain 
 that men did see it. At least they were not quite 
 able to see that he was proposing not only a 
 perfectly valid distinction between powers, but a 
 real theory of imperial structure. Consequently 
 Dickinson's words did not have the weight they 
 deserved in pointing the way to composite empire, 
 an empire in which there was an indefeasible par- 
 ticipation of the parts under a government charged 
 with the maintenance of the whole. Federalism, 
 we must remember, necessitates singling out of 
 specific branches of authority, which we commonly 
 call " powers." Nothing is simpler in the primer 
 of our constitutional law than the distinction 
 between the taxing power and the power to 
 regulate interstate and foreign commerce. Any 
 person, though he be unlearned in jurisprudence, 
 will talk glibly of the commerce power, the treaty- 
 making power, the taxing power and many other 
 powers, fully realizing that we take certain authori- 
 ties of government and label them, put them in 
 certain receptacles, and leave to our astute courts 
 the duty of deciding whether a legislative act is 
 to be classified thus or so and whether it is a due 
 exercise of " powers " that have been authorita- 
 tively granted. And so it is amazing to us, this 
 difficulty in seeing the validity of this most 
 commonplace distinction, and that write^-s should 
 still think Dickinson was speaking in confusion
 
 AMERICAN FEDERALISM 165 
 
 instead, as was the fact, talking the A, B, C of 
 American constitutional law. 
 
 Dickinson's position distinguished the power to 
 regulate trade from the power to tax. The dis- 
 tinction deserves to be called proper, because we 
 have had it in active operation under our Constitu- 
 tion for a century and over. But it was proper 
 also, because it carried on the practices of the old 
 empire. Parliament had regulated trade ; it had 
 not taxed. For a century or more the empire 
 had acknowledged in practice, not to speak of 
 in charters and commissions and instructions, the 
 existence of colonies with the authority to tax 
 for local concerns, and had refrained from taxation 
 for imperial purposes. To a marked degree we 
 may say again the empire was a commercial 
 empire. Its commercial purposes were expressed 
 in navigation acts, and a large portion even of the 
 administrative control by the Royal council had 
 been directed to the support of those enactments 
 and that commercial policy. 
 
 Before passing on to other and particularly 
 later appreciations of federalism, let us turn to 
 the other side of the matter. Englishmen, 
 whether they defended the colonists or opposed 
 them, were likely to take refuge in insular {i.e. 
 English) law, not discussing the question openly 
 as to whether Parliament had become imperial, 
 or whether, if it had, its power was unlimited ; 
 blank assertion took the place of argument.^ 
 
 ^ Special exceptions should of course be made. Thomas 
 Pownall^in his Administration of the Colonies (London, 1764,
 
 i66 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 They occasionally spoke learnedly or superficially 
 of whether places without the realm could be 
 taxed, or whether such places must be brought 
 within the realm and given representation before 
 they could be taxed ; and thus, in referring to 
 past conditions in the history of Britain, they 
 really recognized the fact that even Britain herself 
 had been a growth and had been compounded, 
 but curiously enough they were blind to the com- 
 posite empire already in existence and to the 
 practices of a century. The freedom from 
 taxation they discussed from the viewpoint of 
 insular institutions, and, as the world knows, 
 made the ludicrous blunder of attempting to 
 impute the insular system of representation to the 
 whole empire. They fumbled with the whole 
 principle of representation ; but their chief error 
 was the insistence on applying to the whole empire 
 certain rigid principles which they believed were 
 logically irrefutable. Scarcely any one of them 
 saw that, in the development of empire, had arisen 
 new principles of law and organization. Of 
 course they rejected the distinction between 
 internal taxation and external taxation, as there 
 may have been reason for doing on practical as 
 well as theoretical grounds ; from the beginning 
 they denied the possibility of classification of 
 powers ; they asserted the indivisible character of 
 legislative power, and almost at once took a 
 
 and later amplified editions), struggles to find expression. Of 
 course there were others. Vide, for example, Johnstone's 
 Speech on . . . recommitting the Address, etc. (London, 1776).
 
 AMERICAN FEDERALISM 167 
 
 position which, if insisted on in practice, left 
 nothing to the colonists but a choice between 
 acceptance of an absolute government at the 
 head of a centralized empire on the one hand, and 
 the total denial of all parliamentary authority 
 on the other.^ 
 
 The pamphlet entitled The Controversy Between 
 Great Britain and her Colonies, commonly attri- 
 buted to the pen of William Knox, probably 
 deserves the praise bestowed upon it as being the 
 best presentation of Britain's case.^ It is true 
 that in one flagrant instance it falsely juggles 
 with Locke's second essay, and it shows more 
 than usual cunning in making Locke's theories 
 support governmental authority ; but the argu- 
 ment from the history of Parliament and the em- 
 pire to support the claim for imperial authority 
 is able and has the strength of historical statement 
 as contradistinguished from bald assertion and 
 adroit legalism. Knox, however, has a merry 
 time with Dickinson, proving to his own satisfac- 
 tion the folly of distinguishing between taxation 
 and regulation of commerce ; and he thus fails 
 utterly to see anything but a centralized empire 
 with all authority in ParHament. " There is no 
 alternative : either the colonies are a part of the 
 community of Great Britain, or they are in a 
 
 ^ Pitt's statement distinguishing taxation from legislation is 
 omitted from this discussion in the text. See for partial 
 support of position above, Grenville, Speech of January 14, 
 1766. Pari. Hist., XVI, loi. See also Ibid., l6j. 
 
 2 Except Hutchinson's speeches of 1773.
 
 i68 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 state of nature with respect to her, and in no case 
 can be subject to the jurisdiction of that legislative 
 power which represents her community, which is 
 the British Parliament." Nothing could more 
 fully discredit legalism when dealing with a 
 practical problem of statesmanship ; this was 
 denying that Parliament could not recognize 
 the illegality of doing what in practice it actually 
 had not done and what the passing years were 
 proving it could in reality not do.^ 
 
 Even before 1770, many American opponents 
 of parliamentary taxation had been hurried along 
 to the position in which they denied that Parlia- 
 ment possessed any power over them.^ It would 
 appear, however, that the more sober-minded 
 did not as yet openly go so far ; it was easy for 
 the thoughtless to resent British assertion of 
 authority by the simple denial of all authority. 
 There is no such declaration, however, in the 
 American State Papers. There was still readiness, 
 
 ^ In a pamphlet attributed to Phelps, 7he Rights of the 
 colonies and the extent of the legislative authority of Great 
 Britain briefly stated and considered (lySg), pp. 11 and 12, we 
 find : " The colonies, therefore, must either acknowledge the 
 legislative power of Great Britain in its full extent, or set 
 themselves up as independent states ; I say in its full extent, 
 because if there be any reserve in their obedience, which they 
 can legally claim, they must have a power within themselves 
 superior to that of the mother country ; for her obedience to 
 the legislature is without limitation." Winsor says Phelps was 
 Under-Secretary to Lord Sandwich. Narr. and Crit. Hist., 
 VI, 85. 
 
 2 See for example J. K. Hosmer, Life of Thomas Hutchinson, 
 134-
 
 AMERICAN FEDERALISM 169 
 
 as there continued to be after 1770, to acquiesce 
 in British regulation of the trade of the empire, 
 and in such Royal control as was consistent with 
 practice and the charters. 
 
 In 1770 when the long controversy arose be- 
 tween Hutchinson and the Massachusetts legisla- 
 ture over the right to remove the legislature to 
 Cambridge, Hutchinson declared that the Boston 
 men, having denied the power of Parliament over 
 them, were now prepared to deny the power of 
 the Crown. It is perfectly true that that con- 
 troversy concerned the power of the Crown ; it 
 involved the question whether the prerogative 
 could be used freely and arbitrarily and in dis- 
 regard of established laws and the charter ; but 
 certainly till that time the colonists had not 
 committed themselves to the doctrine that 
 ParHament was totally powerless, nor did they 
 then deny in toto the authority of the Crown. 
 As before 1770 they had asserted that there were 
 bounds to the authority of Parliament, so now 
 they rejected the notion that sufficient excuse 
 for a governor's acts was his simple declaration 
 that he had received orders from Westminster. 
 Even in the exercise of the prerogative, there must 
 be recognition of the legal entity and the legal 
 competence of the colony as an integral portion 
 of an integral empire ; that was the position of 
 the Massachusetts legislature translated into 
 modern terms. 
 
 Students of the Revolution that believe the 
 movement was economic in origin, character and
 
 170 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 purpose, may not deny that, after 1768, Parlia- 
 ment had no express hope or intention of obtaining 
 revenue from America. From that time on, 
 British interest was largely, if not wholly, confined 
 to asserting parliamentary omnipotence, or, if 
 this seems too strong, confined to an insistence 
 upon the supreme power of Parliament and to 
 resisting what they believed, under the tutelage 
 of American governors, was a conscious tendency 
 towards independence. Indeed, especially after 
 1768, but to a considerable extent from 1766, 
 the question was not so much whether the colonies 
 would pay taxes as whether they would acknow-- 
 ledge the legal obligation ; and to an amazing 
 extent the conflict was over the existence or 
 nonexistence of an abstract right. As we have 
 already seen, much of the colonial argument was 
 in defence of individual liberty, not of states 
 rights ; but the centre of the controversy was 
 whether or not Parliament was possessed of limit- 
 less authority. 
 
 The colonists at least claimed to be satisfied 
 with the old regime, in which power had been 
 divided, and in which Parliament had chiefly 
 shown its power by the regulation of trade.-*- The 
 
 ^ " Every advantage that could arise from commerce they 
 have offered us without reserve ; and their language to us has 
 been — ' Restrict us as much as you please in acquiring property 
 by regulating our trade to your advantage ; but claim not the 
 disposal of that property after it has been acquired — Be satis- 
 lied with the authority you exercised over us before the present 
 Reign.' " Additional Observations on the Nature and Value 
 of Civil Liberty, and the War with America, by Richard Price.
 
 AMERICAN FEDERALISM 171 
 
 parliamentarians insisted that in the law of the 
 empire the will of Parhament was nothing more 
 nor less than supreme and all-inclusive. The 
 colonists insisted, though they did not use this 
 phraseology, that old practices of the empire were 
 the law of the empire and thus, in modern phrase- 
 ology, they demanded the recognition of a compo- 
 site empire based on law. Even if we admit the 
 presence of many economic and social forces, 
 we find in actual conflict two theories of imperial 
 order; and in this discussion after 1768, if not 
 before, the EngHsh parliamentarians and pam- 
 phleteers were victims of certain dogmas of poli- 
 tical science, curiously similar to the doctrine of 
 indivisible sovereignty.^ How often did Burke 
 
 " And when men are driven for want of argument, they fly 
 to this as their last resource — 'Acts of Parliament (say their 
 advocates) are sacred, and^should be implicitly submitted to — 
 for if the supreme power does not lodge somewhere operatively, 
 and effectually, there must be an end of all legislation.' " 
 Lord Chatham's Speech on the 20th of January, 1775. Taken 
 by a member, p. 9 (1775). 
 
 1 "If, intemperately, unwisely, fatally, you sophisticate and 
 poison the very source of government by urging subtle deduc- 
 tions and consequences odious to those you govern from the 
 unlimited and illimitable nature of sovereignty, you will teach 
 them by those means to call that sovereignty itself in question. 
 When you drive him hard the boar will turn upon the hunters. 
 If that sovereignty and their freedom cannot be reconciled, 
 which will they take ? They will cast your sovereignty in your 
 face, nobody will be argued into slavery." Burke, Speech on 
 American Taxation, Works, Vol II, p. 73. See also Ibid., 
 pp. 141-2, for Burke's wishing to see the colonies admitted to 
 an interest in the constitution, an evidence that he too 
 recognized in some measure the need of formal statement.
 
 172 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 deprecate the continual harping on Parliament's 
 authority, on the necessity of acknowledging the 
 theoretical supremacy of Parliament ! ^ He 
 deplored the common talk about the legal rights. 
 Beyond Burke's speeches little needs be cited 
 to show the essentially legalistic character of the 
 whole discussion. 
 
 It may be rash to assert that the colonists were 
 less insistent upon knowing what the constitution 
 of the empire was than were the Englishmen, 
 though there seems no reason to doubt that the 
 colonists would have willingly accepted the old 
 practice as sufficient, if it were not threatened. 
 Still, the colonists desired to know precisely what 
 were American rights ; and in this respect 
 possibly America was more legalistic than Britain, 
 
 ^ An illustration of the same thing may be seen in an American 
 source : 
 
 " Moreover, when we consider that Parliamentary taxations 
 are not as to their present value, a matter of moment, either 
 to the mother country or the colonies ; that the contention 
 between us is upon the points of principle and precedent ; 
 that it is not the quantum, but the manner of exacting our 
 unconstitutional impost, which is the bone of contention, our 
 public jealousies must necessarily be increased. 
 
 " When the taxation was more general, there was some colour 
 for the assertion in the Revenue Act, that it was intended for 
 the safety and defence of the colonies. But it is not only 
 true, but this cannot be asserted of the paltry duty on tea ; 
 we know, we were assured by our enemies, that when the 
 other articles charged by the Revenue Acts were exempted by 
 the partial repeal, the duty on tea was left as a standing memorial 
 of the right of Parliament to tax Americans." Force, Archives, 
 Fourth Series, I, 256 note — copied from the New Tork Gazetteer, 
 May 12, 1774.
 
 AMERICAN FEDERALISM 173 
 
 because Parliament insisted on the existence of 
 unlimited power — asserted, one might not un- 
 justly say, that Parliament was above the law — 
 while the colonists asserted that Parliament was 
 bound by rigid law. " The patchwork govern- 
 ment of America," wrote Bernard in 1765,^ 
 " will last no longer ; the necessity of a parlia- 
 mentary establishment of the governments of 
 America upon fixed constitutional principles, is 
 brought out with a precipitation which could 
 not have been foreseen but a year ago ; and is 
 become more urgent, by the very incidents which 
 make it more difficult." At this time, it will be 
 remembered, he proposed an extraordinary Parlia- 
 ment, in which there were to be American repre- 
 sentatives, which should form and establish " a 
 general and uniform system of American govern- 
 ment " ; " and let the relation of America be 
 determined and ascertained by a solemn Recogni- 
 tion ; so that the rights of the American govern- 
 ments, and their subordination to that of Great 
 Britain, may no longer be a subject of doubt and 
 disputation." In 1766 he declares that "the 
 Stamp Act is become in itself a matter of indiffer- 
 ence ; it is swallowed up in the importance of the 
 effects of which it has been the cause. . . . And 
 as the relation between Great Britain and the 
 colonies has not only been never settled, but 
 scarce even formally canvassed, it is the less sur- 
 prising, that the ideas of it on one side of the 
 water and on the other are so widely different, to 
 
 1 Select Letters, p. 33.
 
 174 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 reconcile these, and to ascertain the nature of the 
 subjection of the colonies to the Crown of Great 
 Britain, will be a work of time and difficulty." 
 
 There can be little doubt that Bernard was 
 right ; the problem of the day was the problem 
 of imperial organization : were Englishmen or 
 Americans capable of finding a law of the empire ?^ 
 If so, that law must be consonant with practical 
 realities ; it must be a formulation of the principles 
 of relationship which recognized not centraliza- 
 tion but distribution.^ As an indication of the 
 fact that men were discussing legal rights, and 
 
 ^ By " law " I do not mean that there was a demand for a 
 parliamentary act ; I mean at the least an evident under- 
 standing, at the most a formal acknowledgment of power and 
 the extent of it, a formal recognition of the complete authority 
 of Parliament, or, on the other hand, of the width and depth 
 of the actual colonial legal competence. 
 
 ^ It is plain, too, that Hutchinson, a legal-minded man, also 
 felt in the days of Bernard's governorship, as later, that the 
 constitution must be settled. " I wish to see known established 
 principles, one general rule of subjection, which once acknow- 
 ledged, any attempts in opposition to them will be more easily 
 crushed." Letter of April 21, 1766, quoted in Quincy Reports, 
 443-4. " Our misfortune is the different apprehension of the 
 nature and degree of our dependence. I wish to see it settled, 
 known, and admitted ; for while the rules of law are vague 
 and uncertain, especially in such fundamental points, our con- 
 dition is deplorable in general." Letter of December 31, 1766, 
 Hosmer's Hutchinson, p. 121. 
 
 Only one other question — and that intimately associated with 
 the first — vied with it in importance : Were there or were 
 there not rooted in the British Constitution fundamental prin- 
 ciples of individual liberty superior to legislative authority and 
 must they be recognized in the British legislation for colonial 
 affairs .?
 
 AMERICAN FEDERALISM 175 
 
 losing sight of financial returns, it may be sufficient 
 for the earlier days to refer to the comments in 
 the Parliamentary History ^ on the debate about 
 the Circular Letter. It was insisted by opponents 
 of the Ministry in debate on the Massachusetts 
 Circular Letter and in respect to the revenue 
 laws " that the inutility of these laws was so 
 evident, that the ministers did not even pretend- 
 to support them upon that ground, but rested 
 their defence upon the expediency of establishing 
 the right of taxation." And if we turn again to 
 Dickinson, we find the same thing in a different 
 guise — the necessity of law in the empire — not a 
 law securing centralized authority but freedom. 
 There could be no freedom without legal restric- 
 tion : " For who are a free people ? Not those 
 over whom government is reasonably and equit- 
 ably exercised, but those who live under a govern- 
 ment so constitutionally checked and controlled 
 that proper provision is made against its being 
 otherwise exercised." ^ 
 
 We might wisely spend much time in consider- 
 ing the dispute in 1770 already referred to — the 
 dispute as to whether instructions could ipso facto 
 dispose of all matters of constitutional right of the 
 colonies, or whether even the Crown was limited in 
 imperial authority by the fact of the existence of 
 competent and legally recognized colonial legisla- 
 tures. But passing over those three years or so 
 of legalistic dispute, let us come to "the great 
 
 1 XVI, p. 488. 
 
 * Memoirs of the Historical Society oj Penn., XIV, p. 356.
 
 176 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 controversy" of 1773. In considering this we 
 can echo John Adams' expression of amazement 
 at Hutchinson's audacity in throwing down the 
 gauntlet. The truth probably is that Hutchinson 
 had been grievously tried for years, not alone by 
 what he considered the unmannerly conduct of 
 the rabble, but by the doctrines which he heard 
 in the market-place and perhaps in legislative halls. 
 He believed that the theories of the malcontents 
 were unsound and that he in the plenitude of his 
 wisdom could establish their invalidity ; and he 
 prepared therefore to bring his heaviest artillery 
 to bear upon the unreasoning followers of Samuel 
 Adams and against the arch agitator himself. 
 What he wished to do, be it noticed, was to de- 
 molish a false theory of the empire and bring every 
 one to acknowledge, not the wisdom of obnoxious 
 legislation, but the legal authority of Parliament. 
 By this time doubtless there was much talk about 
 complete freedom from parliamentary control, 
 but there had been little if any formal public 
 announcement by the radicals of anything more 
 than a freedom from taxation. 
 
 Hutchinson, it must be said, had considerable 
 reason for having confidence in his massed attack ; 
 for his argument was able and compelling, serving 
 by its weight to bring into play all the open and 
 masked batteries of the Opposition. He finally 
 reached in his first paper a position from which he 
 believed he could discharge one final and conclu- 
 sive volley ; he was prepared to use an undeniable 
 principle of political science ; he believed he could
 
 AMERICAN FEDERALISM 177 
 
 silence his enemies with its mere pronouncement : 
 " It is impossible there should be two independent 
 Legislatures in the one and the same State." ^ 
 Despite all the discussion that had gone on, de- 
 spite the fact that Britain had been practising 
 federahsm, Hutchinson could see nothing but 
 the theory of centralized legislative omnipotence 
 and could not conceive of distribution of power 
 between mutually independent legislative bodies. 
 And yet this undeniable axiom of political science 
 was to be proved untrue in the course of fifteen 
 years by the establishment of fourteen indepen- 
 dent legislatures in the single federal state, the 
 United States of America. 
 
 The two branches of the legislature met 
 Hutchinson's general argument somewhat differ- 
 ently. The house argued valiantly for complete 
 freedom from parliamentary control ; in facing 
 the alternative of complete freedom from Parlia- 
 ment and complete subservience, they unhesita- 
 tingly chose the former, though they did seem to 
 recognize the possibility of drawing a line between 
 the supreme authority of Parliament and total 
 independence.^ The Council, wiser and more 
 
 1 Mass. State Papers, p. 340. 
 
 2 That is to say, they did not deny the possibility of dis- 
 tribution and a line of distinction between governments in the 
 empire. " And, indeed, it is difficult, if possible, to draw a 
 line of distinction between the universal authority of Par- 
 liament over the colonies, and no authority at all," " If your 
 Excellency expects to have the line of distinction between the 
 supreme authority of Parliament, and the total independence 
 of the colonies drawn by us, we would say it would be an
 
 178 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 conservative than the House, announced federal- 
 ism ; they contended that the colony had " prop- 
 erty in the privileges granted to it," i. e. an 
 indefeasible legal title : " But, as in fact, the 
 two powers are not incompatible, and do subsist 
 together, each restraining its acts to their consti- 
 tutional objects, can we not from hence, see how 
 the supreme power may supervise, regulate, and 
 make general laws for the kingdom, without 
 interfering with the privileges of the subordinate 
 powers within it ? " ••■ This is a clear, precise 
 
 arduous undertaking, and of very great importance to all the 
 other colonies ; and therefore, could we conceive of such a 
 line, we should be unwilling to propose it, without their consent 
 in Congress." Hosmer, Hutchinson^ pp. 382, 395. 
 
 ^ Hosmer, Hutchinson, p. 412, It will not do, to argue that 
 they meant, by *' subordinate," subject to the whim and con- 
 trol of Parliament ; for that is just what they were arguing 
 against. They denied that supremacy meant complete un- 
 limited power, or that subordination meant unlimited sub- 
 mission. Of course " co-ordinate " is more nearly expressive 
 of federalism than " subordinate " ; but the principle these 
 men had in mind is that of distribution, legal distribution, by 
 which the parts legally control local affairs, a general government 
 regulates and safeguards general affairs. 
 
 I omit, to save space, the extended argument, but I must 
 call attention to their assertion of legal possession of constitu- 
 tional right by the colonies as integral portions of the empire, 
 and also to their declaration, in a delicate manner, that 
 Hutchinson was dealing with theories, and disregarding the 
 fact, and that fact was the distribution of powers, not cen- 
 tralization : " What has been here said \i. e. by Hutchinson] 
 concerning supreme authority, has no reference to the manner 
 in which it has been, in fact, exercised ; but is wholly confined 
 to its general nature." Ibid., p. 413. These arguments are 
 also to be found in Mass. State Papers, as well as in the appendix 
 to Hosmer's Hutchinson,
 
 AMERICAN FEDERALISM 179 
 
 and thorough description of federaHsm. It is 
 plain enough, then, that there were some clear- 
 headed men, who, in the years just before the 
 final break with England, were not silenced by the 
 fulminations of British pamphleteers or the dog- 
 matic assertions of Hutchinson into a belief that 
 the empire was simple and unitary ; nor were 
 they as yet ready to accept the learned and 
 technical argument of John Adams, though 
 buttressed by pedantic reference to Calvin's case, 
 that the empire was held together by the king, 
 a personal union only. 
 
 The American theory of federalism is stated 
 with such amazing accuracy in an answer to Doctor 
 Johnson's Taxation No Tyranny,'^ that it deserves 
 quotation at considerable length : 
 
 " Now this, in abstract, sounds well. When 
 we speak of the Legislature of a community, we 
 suppose only one Legislature; and where there 
 is but one, it must of necessity have the right 
 you speak of ; otherwise, no taxes at all could be 
 raised in that community. . . . Now the present 
 dispute is not with respect to this Island alone, 
 which certainly has but one Legislature, but with 
 respect to the British Empire at large, in which 
 there are many Legislatures ; or many Assemblies 
 claiming to be so. . . . From the state of the 
 British Empire, composed of extensive and dis- 
 persed Dominions, and from the nature of its 
 
 1 An Answer to a Pamphlet entitled " Taxation No Tyranny," 
 found in Force's American Archives, Fourth Series, I, 1 450, 
 latter part of paragraph on p. 145 1. 
 
 N 2
 
 i8o AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 Government, a multiplicity of Legislatures, or of 
 Assemblies claiming to be so, have arisen in one 
 Empire. It is in some degree a new case in legis- 
 lation, and must be governed therefore more by- 
 its own circumstances, and hy the genius of our 
 pecuHar Constitution, than by abstract notions 
 of Government at large. Every Colony, in fact, 
 has two Legislatures, one interiour and Provincial, 
 viz. : the Colony Assembly ; the other exteriour 
 and imperial, viz. : the British Parliament. . . . 
 Neither will the unity of the Empire be in danger 
 from the Provincial Legislature being thus exclu- 
 sive as to points. It is perfectly sufficient, if the 
 British Legislature be supreme as to all those 
 things which are essential to Great Britain'' s being 
 substantially the head of the Empire ; a Hne not 
 very difficult to be drawn, if it were the present 
 subject. Neither is there any absurdity in there 
 being two Assemblies, each of them sufficient, or, 
 if you will, supreme, as to objects perfectly 
 distinct ; for this plain reason, that the objects 
 being perfectly distinct, they cannot clash. The 
 Colonist, therefore, allowing that the supreme 
 power of Legislature, where there is but one, 
 must have the right you speak of, will say that with 
 respect to him, there are two, and that the Pro- 
 vincial Legislature is the supreme power as to 
 taxation for his Colony. And so the controversy, 
 notwithstanding your position, will remain just 
 where it began." 
 
 The discussions in the Continental Congress 
 of 1774 show us the trouble that the colonists 
 had in reaching a satisfactory theory. By that
 
 AMERICAN FEDERALISM i8i 
 
 time, many had come to the conclusion that 
 ParHament possessed no power to pass laws govern- 
 ing the colonies. But the situation and the 
 experience were too plain, and Congress " from 
 the necessities of the case " announced that 
 parliamentary regulation of trade would be 
 accepted, but not taxation external or internal. 
 They proposed as a working basis for the whole 
 system — perhaps no longer to be termed an 
 empire if there was no legislature with any im- 
 perial power legally speaking — the distinction 
 between taxation and regulation of commerce, 
 and they really put themselves back, as far as 
 practice was concerned, nearly if not quite in the 
 position of eleven years before. It cannot be 
 supposed, as they accepted the king as their king, 
 that the Congress of 1774 would deny the general 
 right of the mother country, through the execu- 
 tive head, to make war and peace, manage diplo- 
 macy, hold the back lands, control Indian affairs 
 and probably the post office — in other words, to 
 exercise the significant powers bestowed on the 
 central government of the United States under our 
 Constitution. They were prepared to acknow- 
 ledge a political order, in which all the great 
 powers bestowed on our central government under 
 the Constitution with the exception of the power 
 to tax should be in the hands of the central authori- 
 ties at Westminster ; and they evidently accepted 
 and promulgated the possibility of distribution 
 of power. ^ 
 
 1 I have not attempted in this paper to cite all the instances 
 of an appreciation of the fact that the discussion was over the
 
 1 82 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 In drawing up the Declaration of Independence 
 the Continental Congress accepted the theory 
 that Parliament had had no legal authority over 
 them ; but the Articles of Confederation were 
 drawn on the principle of distribution of powers. 
 Of course it may properly be said that the Articles 
 did not provide for the creation of an imperial 
 state. If, however, we look to see how far they 
 carried on the actual distribution which had 
 existed in practice in the old empire, we see much 
 in common between the empire and the Con- 
 possibility of distribution of power in the empire. Let me 
 refer to a letter of Gouverneur Morris to Mr. Penn, May 20, 
 1774. It speaks of the danger of America's falling " under the 
 worst of all possible dominions . . . the domination of a riotous 
 mob," and then proposes " a safe compact " between the 
 colonies and the mother country, " internal taxation, i. e. to 
 be left with ourselves," " the right of regulating trade to be 
 vested in Great Britain.''^ Of course the compact was to 
 form the legal and binding authority for the exercise of power. 
 Force, American Archives, Fourth Series, I, 342-3, 
 
 Notice also that the Pennsylvania Convention of 1774 speaks 
 of the desirability of agreements with Great Britain ; she is to 
 renounce certain claims and America is to accept certain 
 statutes ; money is to be given to the king. It also dwells on 
 the compact which has to do largely with trade : " With such 
 parts of the world only as she has appointed us to deal, we 
 shall continue to deal ; and such commodities only as she has 
 permitted us to bring from them, we shall continue to bring. 
 The executive and controlling powers of the Crown will retain 
 their present full force and operation." Ibid., 561. Vide also 
 among other plans. Proposal for a Plan toward a Reconciliation 
 and Reunion, etc., hy one of the Public (London, 1778). 
 
 I omit in this paper mention of various plans of imperial 
 order. They are important as disclosures of effort to distribute 
 powers on a legal basis.
 
 AMERICAN FEDERALISM 183 
 
 federation. We do not find in the new system, of 
 course, any right in the Congress — the new central 
 authority — to exercise some of the functions 
 formerly exercised by the Crown in council ; 
 there was no right to appoint governors, or to 
 instruct them, or to disapprove of the State laws. 
 But the great powers of war and peace, foreign 
 affairs, the post office and Indian affairs belonged 
 to Congress ; and it was understood before adop- 
 tion that the tremendously important matter of 
 the ownership of the back lands, and the adminis- 
 tration of the back settlements — in other words 
 the extension of the empire — ^was to be in the 
 hands of Congress. Only a detailed examination 
 would show how much of the old practical system 
 of the empire was formulated in the Articles. 
 It is sufficient now to say, and it is quite unneces- 
 sary to say it, that very much of the old system 
 was there formulated, and the Articles carried 
 on very distinctly the principle of distribution 
 of powers and on the whole provided for govern- 
 ments with distinct spheres of action.^ A student 
 of the Articles will of course be carried back to 
 the Albany plan and even to the New England 
 Confederacy of 1643 ; but he will be hopelessly 
 at sea unless he grasps the fact that the contents 
 of the document are distinctly the products of 
 imperial history, and they constitute, (i) the 
 first quasi-legal formulation of imperial existence, 
 
 ^ Even the system of Admiralty jurisdiction was carried 
 forward through the Articles into the Constitution of the 
 United States.
 
 1 84 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 (2) the immediate preparation for ultimate real 
 and full formulation in the Constitution. 
 
 The two powers of which there had been much 
 discussion in the ten years before independence 
 were not adequately provided for in the Confeder- 
 ation. Congress, the new general government, 
 was not given the right to raise money by taxation, 
 the Articles accepting the principle of requisitions 
 which the colonists as part of the British empire 
 had insisted on. Everybody knows that requisi- 
 tions proved a failure in the new system, and this 
 fact in a way gave a tardy justice to the arguments 
 of the parliamentarians in the days before the 
 Revolution. It is more surprising, however, that 
 Congress was not given the right to regulate 
 trade, inasmuch as, almost to the last, the colonies 
 had either openly acknowledged parliamentary 
 authority in the matter or openly professed a 
 willingness to acquiesce in the practical exercise 
 of such authority. The failure to grant the 
 authority to Congress shows how particularism 
 had grown, or it discloses an inability to see that 
 the need of imperial regulation of trade was just 
 as vital in the new system as in the old. Because 
 Congress did not possess these two powers, taxation 
 and regulation of commerce, the Confederation 
 proved a failure. 
 
 The Confederation might very well, we may 
 suppose, have proved a failure even if Congress 
 had been given these two essential powers. As 
 to that little or nothing need be said ; it is a very 
 old story ; the States suffered from the natural
 
 AMERICAN FEDERALISM 18^ 
 
 effects of a Revolution, and, had Congress had 
 authority on paper, Hcence and particularistic 
 folly might have made it impossible to go on, 
 until the natural reaction in favour of nationalism 
 and order set in. However that may be, these 
 two powers had to be bestowed, conditions proved 
 it ; and in the new Constitution Congress was 
 given power to tax for national purposes and to 
 regulate commerce. The principle of federalism 
 was recognized, formulated and legalized in the 
 Constitution ; the new government was given 
 its distinct sphere of action and was made the 
 recipient of a body of powers, carefully named and 
 carefully deposited in their proper places ; but 
 in the selection and deposition little needed to be 
 done but to follow the practices of the old British 
 colonial system. 
 
 The Convention of 1787 had difficulty in seeing 
 the whole complicated scheme as a working- 
 mechanism ; but how could the members possibly 
 have imagined it at all, or provided for the scheme 
 which in its essentials was the basis of federalism 
 the world over, without the aid of the historical 
 forces and the old practices ? Save perhaps with 
 the old troublesome problem of the militia, the 
 military question in the federal state, they had 
 little trouble in determining what should be the 
 distribution and classification of powers. Their 
 chief difficulty was again the old one — colonial 
 disobedience, which was now state wilfulness ; 
 and this difficulty was surmounted, as we know, 
 by firm adherence to the principle of distinction
 
 1 86 AMERICA AND BRITAIN 
 
 between local and general authority, and by recog- 
 nizing that each governmental authority was 
 competent and supreme within its own sphere 
 and had the legal power to enforce its lawful acts 
 on its own citizens. Perhaps both parts of this 
 principle of cohesion and of authority — of cohe- 
 sion because of division, and of authority because 
 of immediate operation — were inherited from the 
 old empire ; certainly the former one was. 
 
 Pkinted in Great Britain by Richard Clav & Sons, Limited, 
 erl'nswick st,, stamford st., s.b. i, and bungay, suffolk.
 
 2) 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW. 
 
 50»n-3,'68(H9242s8)9482
 
 3 1205 00379 8004 
 1^ 
 
 ur SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 295 510 2