The Conservative (Lovecraft)/July 1916/The American Proletariat Versus England
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. But space does not permit of its discussion here, as it is not relevant to the theme. Suffice it to say that a genuine comprehension of England and the English on the part of Americans is the surest way to an understanding of the true aim of English policy. That these aims are prejudicial to the United States, no one can even attempt to prove.
But the trouble really started in 1776.
The Revolutionary War was George the Third's own private and particular war. With practically the whole English nation against him, he persisted in that policy of personal government for the Colonies which culminated in the Declaration of Independence. Chatham opposed him and spoke for the Americans. Likewise did Burke and Charles James Fox. The Marquis of Cornwall, Lord Admiral Howe accepted their commissions reluctantly and fought only because they considered military duty above personal opinions. Admiral Keppel flatly refused to fight the Colonies. Nor would Sir Geoffrey Amherst, one of the greatest commanders of his day, though the King personally entreated him to take an army. Furthermore, the English people themselves refused to enlist, thus forcing the government to hire those Hessians who are the objects of so much American scorn.
In the face of all this, it is preposterous to assert that we whipped England. We did little more than subdue George the Third--with the aid of France. It is rank prejudice to indict the English nation for the stupid policy of one of its kings. It is insensate folly to cherish spite and venom against that nation one hundred and forty years after the event.
Yet we do just that.
To most of us, England is the arch-representative of basest tyranny. This in spite of the Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights and the fact that Parliament is older than the Austrian monarchy of the Hapsburgs.
After the Revolutionary War came ministerial responsibility. George the Third found himself shorn of real power. Henceforth, by and with the advice of his ministers must the king govern in fact as well as in theory. Today, the ministers are responsible to Parliament for all acts of the executive, and only during Parliament's pleasure do they remain in office. How absurd, then, to speak of tyranny.
On the other hand, the kingship is full of deep meaning and sentiment to the people of the "Tight little island."
For one thousand years there has been a King of England. He is part and parcel of her constituted existence, a co-ordinate member of her government. Today, although his power does rest with an executive ministry, his presence, though hereditary descent by law established, is truly representative of the eternal majesty of the British people. He links the past with the present and the future. As Emperor of India, he is standard bearer for grander dominion than that of Rome. Naturally, then, the English revere their monarchy. They recognize its symbolic mission, perceiving in its stately pomp and pageantry the reflection of a glorious national history.
It is a monarchy, furthermore, which weighs but lightly on the taxpayer. The crown revenues are derived from estates once belonging to the Royal Family, which were turned over to the state by George the Third, who accepted in lieu thereof a fixed Civil List. As the revenues from the Crown Lands exceed the Civil List, the nation is decidedly the gainer by the arrangement.
Moreover, the King of England is a hardworking, pains-taking public servant whose daily round of arduous duties is no less wearisome and exacting than that of any great man of business. His recent gift to the nation of nearly five hundred thousand dollars (almost the entire Civil List) shows that he is not lacking in patriotic self-denial. The direct power of the Crown is limited, but the personal influence of its wearer is very great. That this has been aught but a good influence since the days of William the Fourth no one can truthfully assert.
Space does not here permit an extended discussion of the British aristocracy. A few words relative thereto, however, may serve to dispel some American misconceptions with regard to it.
According to Continental standards, it is an aristocracy at all. In Germany, Austria, Spain and Italy, every son of a noble is a noble. The titled class is very large, as a rule very worthless, and posseses numerous privileges subversive to the rights of so-called inferior men. In Great Britain only the head of the titled family is noble. His sons are commoners in the eyes of the law and remain such until the eldest succeeds to his father's place, or until any one (or all of them) secures a peerage in his own right through some contribution to the advancement of the country deemed worthy of notice by the Crown. Younger sons, as a rule, must scramble for themselves. Consequently, the race retains its push and initiative, the middle classes constantly receive infusions of the best blood, while titular distinctions remain open to anyone with the brains, ambition and worth to earn them.
A great scientist, for instance, becomes Lord Kelvin; a great poet Lord Tennyson; a great statesman Lord Beaconsfield; a great soldier Lord Kitchener. Attain success and the King registers it for all time.
On the other hand there are some very, very old families in England--many of them without titles, but none the less noble for that. They are not decrepit, bloodless, decayed old families either.
Thomas Fitzalan Howard, for instance, is fifteenth Duke of Norfolk of the second creation. He would be the nineteenth Duke were it not for an act of attainder passed against one of his ancestors which caused a cessation of the title through four lives. Furthermore, he is descended from the Fitzalans who were Earls of Arundel way back in the time of the first Edwards. So be it. Thomas Fitzalan-Howard is a very old man of a very old family and a decidedly active, public-spirited, hardworking old man none the less. Ancestry, in making of him a fine gentleman, has not deprived his country of a most efficient citizen.
Then there is the Earl Curzon of Kedleston, son of the fourth Baron Scarsdale, who entered the House of Commons, made a name for himself, became Viceroy of India and took his seat in the House of Lords on merit alone before the death of his father of whom he was the heir. That father was himself a remarkable man -- Clergyman in the Church of England, Judge of the County Court, large landed proprietor, a universally loved and respected person. Ho died in March of this year, considerably over eighty years of ago.
It's a great breed, the British Nobility. A noble history it has, too. Americans should remember that it was the Barons who wrested the Magna Charta from King John; the great Whif Nobles who destroyed the Stuart tyranny and brought over the Houses of Orange and Brunswick-Luneburg.
Ireland has always been a mighty factor in American Anglophobia. At present the Irish irreconcilables and the Germans are doing all they can to heighten the diseases. They have created a vast amount of maudlin sympathy for the leaders of the latest Sinn Fein outbreak so promptly and properly executed by the British government. Their success in this regard argues little for American possession of the judicial temperament.
Now, the Irish question, like all other questions, is two sided. England has not always been on the right side. On the other hand, she has not always been in the wrong although she would suppose so who judged from the sentiment largely expressed in this country.
One who would correctly inform himself of Irish affairs should read the authorities on both sides and strike the middle ground. To anyone pressed for time, I would recommend a perusal of Professor Patrick W. Royce's very fair and very lucid history. Professor Royce was both Irish and Catholic: but under no circumstances does he lose the judicial, impartial attitude, at no time does he give way to passion; always does he recognize the relativity of facts and circumstances, never does he fail to judge in the light of the spirit of the times. It would be well were the perfervid, harbrained Irish enthusiasts of the present generation to acquire a modicum of his calm and unruffled composure. More weight, at least, would attach to them.
Ireland has, in the past, been terribly misgoverned; but very probably not more so than the average subject race of bygone times and certainly not one whit more cruelly than the Prussian Poles and Danes are ruled today by Casement's dear friend, Germany. On the other hand, within the last two or three generations, England has been doing all in her power to better conditions in Ireland--and has succeeded wonderfully well. Manufacturing and commerce is being encouraged and the fertile soil of the country is being opened to the small cultivator by the wholesale parceling of great estates. The result has been to place the Irish farmer in a much better economic position than is possessed by his brother in England.
Home Rule, too, is on the statute books, awaiting only the end of the war to be put in force. A very liberal form of Home Rule it is to be.
It should further be observed that Irishmen have never, in the whole course of their history, been united among themselves with regard to just what they expected of England. That, upon many occasions, England should have chosen her own course, regardless, is, therefore, not strange.
Today we have Ulster standing out against Home Rule, preferring to be governed from London rather than from Dublin. New Ulstermen are Irish--they lay claim to no other nationality. They are a minority of the Irish population, to be sure; but a very large minority, certainly too large to be ignored. To England comes the difficult matter of adjusting the differences between the two factions of the Irish nation. It is a problem which revolts do not even begin to solve. It is a problem which people separated from the scene by three thousand miles of sea would be wise to let alone.
The Irish in this country are, for the most part, descendants of those who lived under the old order of things. Their prejudice runs away with them. Their ignorance obscures to them the truth. They glory in an attempt to stab England in the back because their patriotism is a blind insanity. But the worst feature of their existence is the fact that they instil into many gullible American minds a feeling of rancor against England which is not justified by the realities. They are enemies of the United States as well us of England. For, much depends upon good feeling between this country and the British Empire.
Good feeling is based upon knowledge.
In short, we Americans should strive to learn more of England, what she is, what she stands for. Certainly three thousand miles of undefended Canadian boundary should prove to us that there is no menace in her empire. Her correct behavior during the Civil War and when we fought Spain should be remembered in her favor. It would be unwise to forget that financially and industrially she leads the world; that politically she is the most advanced of any state known to history--an inexhaustible source for study, reflection and admiration.
Nor does it take deep delving to convince one that Lord Curzon was nearer right than wrong when he declared that "The British Empire is, under Providence, the greatest force for good that the world has ever seen."
England made the Empire.