nd of just and old renown,
Where freedom broadens slowly down,
From precedent to precedent."[2]

[2] Tennyson's "You Ask Me Why."

It is impossible for the great majority of Americans not to take a
deep interest in this movement, for we can never forget that English
history is in a very large degree our history, and that England is, as
Hawthorne likes to call it, "our old home."

In fact, if we go back less than three centuries, the record of
America becomes one with that of the mother country, which first
discovered (SS335, 421) and first permanently settled this, and which
gave us for leaders and educators Washington, Franklin, the Adamses,
and John Harvard. In descent by far the greater part of us are of
English blood or of blood akin to it.[1] We owe to England--that is,
to the British Isles and to the different races which have met and
mingled there--much of our language, literature, law, legislative
forms of government, and the essential features of our civilization.
In fact, without a knowledge of her history, we cannot rightly
understand our own.

[1] In 1840 the population of the United States, in round numbers, was
17,000,000, of whom the greater part were probably of English
descent. Since then there has been an enormous immigration, 40 per
cent of which were from the British Isles; but it is perhaps safe to
say that three quarters of our present population are those were were
living here in 1840, with their descendents. Of the immigrants (up to
1890) coming from non-English-speaking races, the Germans and
Scandinavians predominated, and it is to them, as we have seen, that
the English, in large measure, owe their origin (SS37-39, 126). It
should be noted here that the word "English" is used so as to include
the people of the United Kingdom and their descendants on both sides
of the Atlantic.

Standing on her soil, we possess practically the same personal rights
that we do in America; we speak the same tongue, we meet with the same
familiar names. We feel that whatever is glorious in her past is ours
also; that Westminster Abbey belongs as much to us as to her, for our
ancestors helped to build its walls and their dust is gathered in its
tombs; that Shakespeare and Milton belong to us in like manner, for
they wrote in the language we speak, for the instruction and delight
of our fathers' fathers, who beat back the Spanish Armada and gave
their lives for liberty on the fie