eadle. We are no better than the publicans, for we
have no workhouse. We are altogether sinners, for we have no lord. It is
also a sad truth that there are people among us who have been seen to
eat with a knife, and but very few that could say, '_H_old _H_ingland,'
with the true London aspiration. But be merciful notwithstanding. We beg
pardon for all our faults. We recognize thy great kindness in coming
among such barbarians. We will treat thee kindly as we can, and copy thy
manners as closely as we can, and so try to improve ourselves. Do not,
therefore, for the present, annihilate us with the indignation of thy
outraged virtue. Have a touch of pity for us unfortunate and degenerate
Americans!'

That supplication is hardly an exaggeration. It was utterly shameful,
the position we took in this matter of deference to English opinion. No
people ever more grossly imposed upon themselves. We had an ideal
England, which we almost worshipped, whose good opinion we coveted like
the praise of a good conscience. We bowed before her word, as the child
bows to the rebuke of a mother he reverences. She was Shakspeare's
England, Raleigh's England, Sidney's England, the England of heroes and
bards and sages, our grand old Mother, who had sat crowned among the
nations for a thousand years. We were proud to claim even remote
relationship with the Island Queen. We were proud to speak her tongue,
to reenact her laws, to read her sages, to sing her songs, to claim her
ancient glory as partly our own. England, the stormy cradle of our
nation, the sullen mistress of the angry western seas, our hearts went
out to her, across the ocean, across the years, across war, across
injustice, and went out still in love and reverence. We never dreamed
that our ideal England was dead and buried, that the actual England was
not the marble goddess of our idolatry, but a poor Brummagem image,
coarse lacquer-ware and tawdry paint! We never dreamed that the queenly
mother of heroes was nursing 'shopkeepers' now, with only shopkeepers'
ethics, 'pawnbrokers' morality'!

At last our eyes are opened. To-day we stand a self-centred nation. We
have seen so much of English consistency, of English nobleness, we have
so learned to prize English honor and English generosity, that there is
not a living American, North or South, who values English opinion, on
any point of national right, duty, or manliness, above the idle
whistling of the wind. Who considers it of the