of their nativity to seek an asylum in the wilderness of the New World, in order to enjoy the liberty of conscience, they, in fact, turned their backs on the field where the battle for that liberty of conscience was to be fought; left it to be fought and won by their brethren who had elected to stay and bear the brunt of it. This fact, alone, should have given Mr. Roosevelt pause ere, by inference, he condemned these stay-at-homes as timid and lazy weaklings. Another fact worth his while to remember is that for generations his strong and daring forefathers were content to depend on their British cousins for protection against domestic and foreign foes. These facts might have taught him that strength and daring are not universal attributes of colonists, or timidity and laziness those of the stay-at-homes. Mr. Roosevelt's worst enemy, if he have any, would not think of accusing him of being a visionary, yet it would seem that in making the assertion that the accomplishment of American independence has given freedom to the whole human race, or to such part of it as possesses it, he has held his imagination with a slack rein. In this view he is opposed by two distinguished Englishmen, of diverse political faith, but equally famed as publicists and close students of the history and institutions of the United States. Mr. James Bryce, in a recently written article, asserts that the very desire for free institutions is passing from the minds of the peoples of Western Europe. In England, "you hear very little said about the British constitution," while forty or fifty years ago it was in everybody's mouth. Not only is there "very much less of a demand for freedom," but "there is less outspoken and general sympathy for any people or race struggling for freedom or nationality;" while, until forty or fifty years ago, "from the days of Lord Byron downward, we had in England a warm sympathy for all oppressed people," and, he asserts, "the same thing is true of Germany." In Germany, "there was a great deal of republican sentiment," but it is now replaced by "a feeling in favor of a strong monarchy." In France there is a republic in name, but, says Mr. Bryce, those who support it the most earnestly do so because they believe it to be the strongest government obtainable. 66 The cause of this, asserts Mr. Bryce, arises, in part, at least, from "disappointment with the results achieved by liberty, by nationality. Free governments have been established over nearly the whole civilized world, and foreign rule has been expelled, but the haven of happiness and peace has not been reached. The ground has been cleared of old weeds, but new weeds have sprung up instead." There are, he says, still quarrels and factions, and still fraud and self-seeking ambition, some corruption, and a great deal of discontent." "There is hardly a legislature in Europe or anywhere else which is nearly as good as the legislatures of fifty years ago." And then, "freedom and nationality were expected to bring about universal peace. They haven't." The ambition of monarchs was thought to have caused most wars; but now: "Republics have been found quite as apt to be carried away by passion and by their sentiments as the monarchs of previous time were."* Taking it all in all, Mr. Bryce has failed to see the boon to the human race conferred by the rage for selfgovernment," the fashion for which was set by the American revolutionists. Mr. Lecky is equally pessimistic. "On the whole," he writes, "American democracy appears to me to carry with it at least as much of warning as of encouragement, especially when the singularly favorable circumstances under which the experiment has been tried" [is considered]. Democracy, Mr. Lecky insists, is not ducive to liberty or morality; the legislatures become degraded with its growth. It is being generally discovered," he says, "that the system which places the supreme power in the hands of mere majorities, consist 66 *An article published by an American newspaper syndicate about the time of the arrival of Mr. Bryce in the United States. 1 ing necessarily of the poorest and most ignorant, whatever else it may do, does not produce parliaments of the most surpassing excellence. Intriguers and demagogues, playing successfully on the passions and credulity of the ignorant and of the poor, form one of the great characteristic evils and dangers of our time."* So Liberal and Conservative are as one in the expression of the belief that the idea of "self-government," spread broadcast to the world by the American Revolutionists, has not vitally affected the whole human race in a manner altogether beneficial. *Published by the same syndicate about the same time. CHAPTER XIII. WHAT DO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE OWE TO THE REVOLUTION? IF the American Revolution and resulting independence did not advance the growth of the free institutions of Great Britain; if it did not rescue its people and those of the colonies from arbitrary rule; if it did not give freedom to the world, what effect did it have upon the welfare and happiness of the people of the sovereign states it created? During the century and a quarter of their enjoyment of "self-government," have they been, and are they now, a freer, a more just, a more moral, honest, peaceful and contented people than they would have been had they remained subjects of the Empire? In an attempt to answer these questions-which, to use the words of Washington, must be but "a speculative apprehension "—it were well to consider what the inhabitants of these sovereign states preserved to themselves, acquired, failed to acquire or lost, which, as dependent colonies, they would not have preserved, acquired or lost. In the first place, they preserved the institution of slavery for, perhaps, two generations longer than they would have preserved it under Imperial rule. In 1834, at a cost to her people of twenty millions of pounds sterling, England gave freedom to the slaves in all her dependencies. Had it not been for the gathering storm of the French Revolution, a consequence of American independence, there is good reason to believe that this emancipation would have been accomplished forty years before that time, during the administration of the younger Pitt; or, if not then, almost certainly during the succeeding administration of Fox. Had the thirteen colonies continued to be members of the Empire, they would have been participants in its benefits. As it was, the curse of slavery remained with them for sixty or seventy years longer, with continually increasing evil effects, then to be destroyed, not by the expressed wish, or at the willingly given cost of their people, but as an incident of one of the bloodiest wars of the century. For, unfortunately, it was never the desire of the people" of the United States, but only that of a comparatively small number of their philanthropic, self-sacrificing citizens, that slavery should be abolished throughout the Union. At the period of the Revolution-with a few, a very few, honorable exceptions-the Disunionists, both North and South, favored that institution. However they might bawl of “Liberty” and “Natural Rights," their vehement rage for those rights was stayed at the color line. Hence, the taunt of the Loyalist versifier that, at one and the same time, they were 66 maintaining that all humankind It is usual to associate Abolition principles with the people of the New England States. But it should be remembered that, at the time of the Revolution, they were not only slave-holders, but slave-traders, engaged in that infernal traffic to supply the planters of the South with negroes kidnapped on the West Coast of Africa, or purchased, with a few puncheons of rum, from some savage chief of that country.1 It is the less surprising, then, however incongruous it may seem, that in the Boston journal in which was first published that famous declaration, proclaiming to the world that all men were created equal, and endowed *The Loyalist Poetry of the Revolution, p. 58. |