55
The Conservative
The American Proletariat Versus England.
By Henry Claphan McGavack.
A large number of Americans have no use for England. They despise her and all she stands for. In spite of the fact that they constitute the most thoughtless and most ignorant section of our people, they are rather powerful politically and are, therefore, not to be ignored in matters which affect international amity.
To them England is the tyrant who taxes without the consent of the taxed. They do not understand the Revolutionary War.
To them England is the barbarian power who respects no other's rights at sea. They do not understand the War of 1812.
To them England is the cruel overlord of Ireland. She is also the home of Monarchy and Aristocracy - fearful cancers. They do not understand English political and social institutions.
Deadly ignorance is the mother of rank prejudice.
To attempt in a short sketch a clear presentation of the truth regarding England and the English in the several connections mentioned above is undertaking the impossible. But it is possible to indicate, in a more or less hazy manner, the most striking facts, leaving to any interested reader the task of making a more complete study for himself.
Three or more articles are here squeezed into one, with the hope of impressing on the American Anglophobe a realization of just how wrong and unjust his conceptions of the great Motherland have been.
Now, the War of 1812 was a commercial one on our part, in which we failed to get recognition for our point of view. So far as England was concerned it was an outgrowth of the Napoleonic Wars, being caused largely by her undue eagerness in ferreting out contraband. Her feeling toward us was one of indifference, more or less, rather than one of haughty overlordship. Her methods were not overscrupulous, perhaps; but Napoleon was her object, not the United States.
At the present time, affairs are somewhat analogous to the conditions in 1812. There is no difference to our viewpoint, however. England is actuated by motives of real concern for the power treatment of American interests at sea so far as is consistent with her own safety. Her attitude has been constantly just, even forbearing.
