cities, there are a very considerable number of Germans who have made England their home, and who preserve to the end of their lives, not only the aspect, but the accent and the character of the Fatherland. But their sons and daughters bred and born in England assume the language, the ideas, the traditions, and the prejudices of their adopted country. Even the Jews, though they may retain their racial creed, and cannot, if they would, divest themselves entirely of their racial characteristics, become, to all intents and purposes, English of the English. So it is in the United States. I remember, on my visiting the West thirty odd years ago, I found that in the outlying districts it was quite as well, speaking German as I then did fluently, to address a stranger in German as in English. But I am prepared to assert that at the present day there is not one in a hundred of the sons and daughters of my old acquaintances in Illinois and Wisconsin and Iowa who speak any language as their mother-tongue other than English. In the second generation the American citizen of German parentage becomes assimilated for all practical purposes to the type of the ordinary native-born American.

Thus, if my view is correct, it is safe to assume, as a rule, that Americans are actuated by much the same ideas, instincts, motives, and modes of thought as their fellow-kinsmen in the Old World. Napoleon the Third was fond of saying that when he wanted to recollect any English custom, habit, or expression, he thought of what would be the analogous custom, habit, or expression in French, and felt confident that the exact converse would be the English. In regard to England and America an opposite rule holds good. Other things being equal, thoughts, ideas, tastes, and actions on any given subject may safely be assumed to be the same with Americans as with Englishmen. On à priori reasoning, therefore, it would have seemed reasonable to suppose that a desire to extend the area of dominion, a wish to become a ruling power in the world by the sub

jugation of weaker races, would have characterized the Trans-Atlantic branch of the Anglo-Saxon community, as it has, except during brief intervals, characterized the Cis-Atlantic. The instinct of a ruling race was, as I contend, always in existence in the Great Republic of the West, but it was kept in abeyance by a combination of peculiar circumstances. In the days of the War of Independence the whole political power of the Union rested with the seaboard States, and notably with the New England States. West was to a great extent a terra incognita, and it is no disparagement to the statesmanship of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and the other fathers of the Republic, to say that they were unable to look further ahead than the eventual incorporation of North America under the Stars and Stripes. It is at once the strength and weakness of the English character to be unwilling, if not unable, to take comprehensive views. To deal with the question of the day, and to leave the future to take care of itself, is the characteristic of our race, and the assertion that the founders of the Union never contemplated the possibility of the United States having any active interest in the affairs of the world outside the American continent is no depreciation of their ability, but a simple recognition of the fact that they shared the normal inability of the Anglo-Saxon to look much beyond his nose. it were not for this inability the Americans would never have extended the area of their Republic from the Atlantic to the Pacific, just as England would never have become the mistress of India.

If

The conditions of England, were undoubtedly more favorable to the development of the Imperial instinct than those of the United States. Thus the contingency of the Republic desiring to extend her borders beyond the American continent was not contemplated by the Constitution of the United States; and throughout the early years of the Union this Constitution was regarded with an unreasoning respect which would have been al

most exaggerated if the Constitution could have claimed the same authorship of Divine Omniscience as is credited to the Ten Commandments. There can be no doubt that the American Constitution has served its purpose excellently, but this has been because it has been administered in the main by men possessing the good sense and political capacity of the AngloSaxon race, not by reason of any extraordinary wisdom or foresight in its composition. To speak the plain truth, the magnum opus of Washington and his colleagues is nothing more nor less than an attempt to paraphrase in writing the unwritten Constitution of the mother country, the place of the Constitutional King being replaced by that of President and the House of Lords by the Senate. Most of the anomalies and inconsistencies of the British Constitution were deliberately introduced into that of the United States, the only exception being that the latter, bound as it is by the written word, does not possess the same facility of adapting itself to new and unforseen conditions as the former has displayed time after time in our own history. The post hoc propter hoc line of argument has, however, an unfailing attraction for the Anglo-Saxon intellect; and the fact that the United States grew and prospered under the Constitution, formed by the Convention of Philadelphia, was regarded by Americans as conclusive evidence of its almost superhuman wisdom. Apart, moreover, from any sentimental respect for the founders of the Union, their injunction that the United States should abstain from any intervention in affairs lying outside the American continent long commended itself to the good sense of the American public. For many years after the Declaration of Independence United States had their hands full, and had not the power, if they even had the will, to occupy themselves with anything beyond the development of their vast unoccupied territories. Yet even in the early days of the Republic there were not wanting indications that the United States would not permanently rest contented with the policy of non

the

intervention. The proclamation of the Monroe doctrine was a violation of the spirit, if not of the letter, of the nonintervention policy. The war with Mexico, which led to the cession of California and Texas, was vehemently denounced by New England as an abandonment of the fundamental principles on which the Union had been established. Indeed, anybody who wished to level a scathing indictment against the war with Spain would find ample material in the "Biglow Papers" of the late Mr. Russell Lowell. Notwithstanding the strain of their internal development, the United States would. probably have extended their restless energy to foreign affairs at a far earlier date, had it not been for the domestic controversy which ended at the Secession War. Indeed, as early as 1849 the American Congress went out of its way to recognize the independence of Hungary, a matter with which, according to the views laid down by the founders of the Republic, it had no more to do than with the Desert of Sahara.

In view of future complications it may be well to point out what was the cause of the Secession War. No doubt, the causa causans was the inherent incompatibility of the slave labor system of the Southern States with the free institutions of the Northern States. Sooner or later the "peculiar institutions" of the South would have had to succumb. But they might, I think, have succumbed without civil war, if the American Constitution had not been so framed, and deliberately so framed, as to permit the legal existence of slavery. The definition of State Rights as laid down in the Constitution was, to say the least, not inconsistent with the maintenance of slavery. Nor except by the most indirect implication was there any clause prohibiting secession, in case any State had cause to consider that State Rights were being violated by the action of the Federal Government. Owing to the inelasticity of the Constitution the Gordian knot could only be cut by the sword. My sympathies were from the outset, and remain still, in favor of the North as against the South, but my respect for

the Northerners, who were prepared to abolish slavery within the Union at all costs and all hazards, could never blind me to the fact that as a matter of legal right the Southerners, who contended that the forcible abolition of slavery within the slave-holding States was a violation of State Rights, and therefore justified secession, had a strong case in their favor.

Whatever may be thought of the strict legality of secession, there can be no question that the outcome of the Civil War was the overthrow of the States Rights doctrine as formulated by the framers of the Union. After the downfall of the Confederacy the United States became a nation, in a sense which they never could have claimed to be before. The unanswerable logic of the accomplished fact has decided that henceforth, States Rights notwithstanding, the majority has got to rule: and in consequence the power of any minority to resist the national will has become null and void. If, therefore, popular opinion in America should become enlisted in favor of a policy of national aggrandizement or of Imperial extension-for the two phrases represent much the same thing-it is obvious this policy cannot be thwarted by the opposition of any individual State or combination of States. And this is exactly what has happened today.

It is not, I think, difficult to indicate the causes which have led to this change of popular sentiment in America. Up, roughly speaking, to the date of the Civil War, the United States were in the main an agricultural community whose chief industry was the production of cotton, wheat, and live stock. All these industries could then be carried on at high profits, owing to the fact that there was for a long period any quantity of virgin land to be had for the asking. The old Western saying that one "had only to tickle the prairie with a hoe and that it smiled back with a harvest," represented something more than an idle boast. Of late years, however, what with the enormous increase of the American population, and the enlarged facilities.

of railway locomotion, the area of unoccupied land has been growing steadily smaller and smaller, and farming has in consequence presented less and less attractions to European immigrants. Manufactures have sprung up throughout the Union and have been fostered by the Protectionist policy of the Republic. One result of this policy has been to create a vast operative class, and to introduce labor questions of the old-fashioned European type into the number of matters of which American professional politicians have to take account. The labor vote, though strongly in favor of protection to native industries at home, is equally in favor of acquiring new markets for American manufactures abroad.

The commercial supremacy of Great Britain is popularly attributed in America to her enormous mercantile marine and to her world-wide colonial possessions. The manufacturers of the United States have come with or without due reason-to the conclusion that their interests demand the adoption of a forward policy in lieu of the traditional policy of non-intervention. Their workmen have become imbued with a similar conviction, and thus the powerful manufacturing interest in America has become enlisted on behalf of Imperial extension. On the other hand, the cotton and grain interests have ceased to possess the same supreme influence as they did in former days. The most marked feature in the contemporary history of the United States has been the gradual decline of the Eastern seaboard States, and the consequent increase in wealth, population, and importance of the Central and Western States. Another curious feature of the Post-Secession era has been the appearance of a proletarian population in the great cities, bearing a family resemblance to the "submerged tenth" of the old-world hives of industry. Even making allowance for the exaggeration inseparable from the Trans-Atlantic journalism, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that for the first time in its records the Western Republic numbers a pauper class amid her citizens; and when once pauper

dom has got implanted in any country the weed is one not easily to be eradicated. Far too great importance may easily be attached to the question of American pauperism, but it is easy to understand that the mere existence of such a question should dispose Americans to look favorably on any measures which might provide means of escape from the novel "unemployment" difficulty, or from the agrarian and operative discontent of which the outcome was Bryanism.

To put the matter plainly, the United States, for the first time in their existence, have been called upon to grapple with the same social difficulties which have long perplexed European statecraft. In the earlier days of the Republic it was accepted as an axiom. that poverty, lack of employment, popular discontent with the existing order of mundane affairs, and distrust in the fabric of society, as a body organized for the protection of the rich against the poor, were all evils generated by the abuses of monarchical and aristocratic institutions, and could never exist under the free institutions of a democratic community untrammelled by a Court, an hereditary Chamber, and a State Church. The American belief in this axiom was confirmed by the approval of many advanced thinkers of the Old World, who all asserted, and I think honestly believed, that under a democracy social evils must of necessity cure themselves. Stern experience has convinced the Americans. of the fallacy of their old belief. They see that the doctrine of all men being equal and entitled to equal rights does not provide food for the poor, employment for the unemployed, or wealth for the masses who have no capital except their hands and arms. Feeling as they do that democratic institutions are no longer a panacea for the cure of social discontents, the Americans resort most naturally to the remedies which under like circumstances have commended themselves to their English forefathers—that is, to foreign trade, to emigration, and to the establishment of a colonial empire.

I doubt greatly whether the truth of

this assertion would be acknowledged openly by the Americans of to-day. I am certain the admission of its truth would have been scouted as a rank heresy by all the leading men of the United States when I first became acquainted with America and the Americans. In common with most English visitors thirty to forty years ago, my relations lay mainly with members of the New England States. In those days these States represented worthily the ideas, traditions, and policy of the founders of the Republic; and the chief article of their political creed was that the United States had nothing to do with affairs lying outside their own vast dominions, and, above all, with the affairs of the Old World of Europe. No honest observer of American affairs during the above period could depreciate the high function filled in American politics by such men as Charles Sumner; at the same time no intelligent observer could fail to see that even in those days the ascendency of New England was a tradition rather than a living force. The ordinary New Englander, in as far as my experience went, knew singularly little about the rest of the Union, and labored under the delusion that Massachusetts and her sister States represented the public opinion of the North, the only difference between East and West being that the former was more cultured, more highly civilized, and more alive to moral influences than the latter. Yet even a very superficial acquaintance with the Great West was sufficient to convince a stranger that the Prairie States, with their enormous area of fertile land, their rapid increase of population, and their extraordinary energy, were destined to become the dominant power in the Union.

The manner in which the Secession War was brought to a close excited even greater admiration on the part of the outside world than the courage displayed by both North and South on the field of battle. The victors and the vanquished apparently abandoned their animosity when they laid down their

were reinstated in their independence. The Federal and Confederate armies were alike disbanded. The soldiers, with scarcely an exception, returned to civil life; and in the belief of the great majority of Americans the old order of things as it had existed before the war was replaced at its conclusion. The few sceptics who ventured to doubt the truth of this belief were derided as cynics, or as persons too blinded by Old World prejudices to appreciate the excellence of democratic institutions. Anybody who after the fall of Richmond had predicted that before the century was at an end the United States would be carrying on a war of conquest, forced upon the Government against its will by popular outery, would have been put down as a lunatic. Yet this is exactly what has come to pass.

About three years ago I was present at a dinner given in London to some Americans who had come to Europe on a matter of business. I happened to be seated next to a leading Californian financier, who had served with great distinction in the Federal armies, and who on the conclusion of the war had gone into business and had become one of the leading citizens of San Francisco. Having known myself several of the celebrities of the war era, we had many common subjects of interest, and grew somewhat more intimate than is usual upon a casual dinner acquaintanceship. At this time the Cuban question had not, I may mention, assumed an acute stage. As there were Americans present at the dinner, it was, of course, followed by speeches; and I need hardly tell anyone acquainted with American post-prandial oratory-in Englandthat the speeches dwelt mainly upon the fact of blood being thicker than water, upon the brotherhood between two nations to whom Shakespeare and Milton were common possessions, and upon the guarantees afforded by AngloAmerican amity for the interests of peace and progress. On the conclusion of the speeches, my neighbor turned round to me and remarked:

I agree in principle with all the sentiments my fellow-countrymen have expressed: but, as an honest man, I am bound to tell you

their statements are not correct as matters of fact, at any rate, as far as the West is concerned. In the West we are spoiling for a war.

On my asking with whom the Americans wished to fight, his reply was:

With your country, I should say for choice, but as long as they can get a war with somebody, it does not matter much with whom it is waged.

To my further question, what were the causes which had given birth to this bellicose sentiment, the answer was:

It is not very easy to say. The fact that trade has been bad of late in the West, that wages are low, and that there are large numbers of workmen either out of employment or working for reduced pay, may have a good deal to do with it. Again, the enormous pension list allotted to the Federal soldiers after the Secession conflict may have stimulated the desire for another war; but I think the main cause is the desire of all our young men to have a war of their own, so as to enable them to show that they are as good men as their fathers. But whether my explanation is the right one, I cannot be certain. All I am sure of is that our people will seize the first opportunity that presents itself for going to war.

I was much impressed at the time by the manifest good faith of my informant; and, as soon as the outcry for a war with Spain commenced in America, I felt confident that the result would confirm the justice of my friend's anticipations.

I have no wish in anything I have said, or may say, to accuse the Americans of having gone to war for interested or unworthy motives. If I were an American, I should certainly have been a partisan of the war. Nor do I think the Americans can justly be accused of insincerity because their reasons for going to war were of a mixed character. Let any candid Englishman ask himself whether, under like circumstances, the British public would not have raised an outcry for war which no British Government could have withstood. For months stories of the outrages, cruelties, and atrocities committed by Spain in Cuba had been circulated throughout the United States. These stories may have been exaggerated, may even in some instances have been utterly false; but they were be