An Address delivered in the Music Hall, Boston, on the 11th of October
1870
_This Address is printed precisely as it was spoken, at the request of
friends who had read extracts in our newspapers. I am quite aware how
superficial it must seem to English readers, and would only remind them
that I had no Parliamentary debates, or other documents, to which to
refer. I am thankful myself to find that, while there are startling gaps
in it, there are no gross blunders as to facts or dates. The kindliness
with which it was listened to by the audience, and discussed in the
American press, allows me to hope that the time has come when any effort
to put an end to the unhappy differences between the two countries will
be looked upon favourably in the United States. The true men and women
on both sides of the Atlantic feel, with Mr. Forster, that a war between
America and England would be a civil war, and believe with him that
we have seen the last of civil war between English-speaking men. Both
nations are, I hope and believe, for a hearty reconciliation, and it
only remains for the Governments to do their part._
Thomas Hughes.
It is with a heavy sense of responsibility, my friends, and no little
anxiety, that I am here to-night to address you on this subject. I have
been in this country now some two months, and from the day I crossed
your frontier I have received, from one end of the land to the other,
from men and women whom I had never seen in my life, and on whom I
had no shadow of a claim that I could discover, nothing but the most
generous, graceful, and unobtrusive hospitality. I am not referring to
this city and its neighbourhood, in which all Englishmen are supposed
to feel very like home, and in which most of us have some old and
dear friend or two. I speak of your States from New York to Iowa and
Missouri, from the Canadian border to Washington. Everywhere I have
been carried about to places of interest in the neighbourhood, lodged,
boarded, and cared for as if I had been a dear relative returning from
long absence. However demoralised an Englishman may become in his own
country, there is always one plank in his social morals which he clings
to with the utmost tenacity, and that is paying his own postage stamps.
My hold even on this last straw is sadly relaxed. I am obliged to keep
vigilant watch on my letters to hinder their being stamped and posted
for me by invisible hands. I never before have so fully realised the
truth of those remarks of your learned and pious fellow-citizen, Rev.
Homer Wilbur, whose lucubrations have been a source of much delight to
me for many years, when he says somewhere, “I think I could go near to
be a perfect Christian if I were always a visitor at the house of some
hospitable friend. I can show a great deal of self-denial where the best
of everything is urged upon me with friendly importunity. It is not
so very hard to turn the other cheek for a kiss.” I should be simply a
brute if I were not equally touched and abashed by the kindness I have
received while amongst you. I can never hope to repay it, but the memory
of it will always be amongst my most precious possessions, and I can, at
least, publicly acknowledge it, as I do here this evening.
But, my friends, I must turn to the other side of the picture. There is
nothing--at any rate, no kind of pleasure, I suppose--which is unmixed.
From the deepest and purest fountains some bitter thing is sure to rise,
and I have not been able, even in the New World, to escape the common
lot of mankind in the Old. Everywhere I have found, when I have sounded
the reason for all this kindness, that it was offered to me personally,
because, to use the words of some whom I hope I may now look on as dear
friends, “We feel that you are one of us.” The moment the name of my
country was mentioned a shade came over the kindest faces. I cannot
conceal from myself that the feeling towards England in this country is
one which must be deeply painful to every Englishman.
It was for this reason that I chose the subject of this lecture. I
cannot bear to remain amongst you under any false pretences, or to leave
you with any false impressions. I am not “one of you,” in the sense of
preferring your institutions to those of my own country. I am before all
things an Englishman--a John Bull, if you will--loving old England and
feeling proud of her. I am jealous of her fair fame, and pained more
than I can say to find what I honestly believe to be a very serious
misunderstanding here, as to the events which more than anything else
have caused this alienation. You, who have proved your readiness as a
people to pour out ease, wealth, life itself, as water, that no shame or
harm should come to your country’s flag or name, should be the last to
wish the citizen of any other country to be false to his own. My respect
and love for your nation and your institutions should be worth nothing
to you, if I were not true to those of my own country, and did not love
them better. For this reason, then, and in the hope of proving to you
that you have misjudged the England of to-day--that she is no longer, at
any rate, if she ever was, the haughty, imperious power her enemies
have loved to paint her, interfering in every quarrel, subsidising and
hectoring over friends, and holding down foes with a brutal and heavy
hand, careless of all law except that of her own making, and bent
above all things on heaping up wealth--I have consented to appear
here tonight. I had hoped to be allowed to be amongst you simply as a
listener and a learner. Since my destiny and your kindness have ordered
it otherwise, I can only speak to you of that which is uppermost in my
thoughts, of which my heart is full. If I say things which are hard for
you to hear, I am sure you will pardon me as you would a spoilt child.
You are responsible for having taught me to open my heart and to speak
my mind to you, and will take it in good part if you do not find that
heart and mind just what you had assumed them to be.
I propose then, to-night, to state the case of my country so far as
regards her conduct while your great rebellion was raging. In a fight
for life, and for principles dearer than life, no men can be fair to
those who are outside. The time comes when they can weigh both sides of
the case impartially. I trust that that time has now arrived, and that I
can safely appeal to the calm judgment of a great people.
It is absolutely necessary, in order to appreciate what took place in
England during your great struggle, to bear in mind, in the first place,
that it agitated our social and political life almost as deeply as it
did yours. I am scarcely old enough to remember the fierce collisions
of party during the first Reform agitation, but I have taken a deep
interest, and during the last twenty years an active part, in every
great struggle since that time; and I say without hesitation, that not
even in the crisis of the Free-trade movement were English people more
deeply stirred than by that grapple between freedom and law on the
one hand, and slavery and privilege on the other, which was so sternly
battled through, and brought to so glorious and triumphant a decision,
in your great rebellion. There can be, I repeat, no greater mistake than
to suppose that there was anything like indifference on our side of the
water, and no one can understand the question who makes it. There was
plenty of ignorance, plenty of fierce partisanship, plenty of bewildered
hesitation and vacillation amongst great masses of honest, well-meaning
people, who could find no steady ground on the shifting sand of
statement and counter-statement with which they were deluged by those
who _did_ know their own minds, and felt by instinct from the first that
here was a battle for life or death; but there was, I repeat again,
no indifference. Our political struggles do not, as a rule, affect our
social life, but during your war the antagonism between your friends and
the friends of the rebel States often grew into personal hostility. I
know old friendships which were sorely tried by it, to put it no
higher. I heard, over and over again, men refuse to meet those who were
conspicuous on the other side. Any of you who had time to glance at our
papers will not need to be told how fiercely the battle was fought in
our press.
It is a mistake, also, to suppose that any section of our people were
on one side or the other. Let me say a few words in explanation of this
part of the subject. And first, of our aristocracy. I do not mean for
a moment to deny that a great majority of them took sides with the
Confederates, and desired to see them successful, and the great Republic
broken up into two jealous and hostile nations. What else could you
expect? Could you fairly look for sympathy in that quarter? Your whole
history has been a determined protest against privilege, and in favour
of equal rights for all men; and you have never been careful, in speech
or conduct, to conciliate your adversaries. For years your papers and
the speeches of your public men had rung with denunciations (many of
them very unfair) of them and their caste. They are not much in the
habit of allowing their sentiments to find public expression, but they
know what is going on in the world, and have long memories. It would be
well if many of us Liberals at home, as well as you on this side, would
remember that in this matter they cannot help themselves. A man in
England may be born a Howard, or a Cavendish, or a Cecil, without
any fault of his own, and is apt to “rear up,” as you say, when this
accident is spoken of as though it were an act of voluntary malignity on
his part, and to resent the doctrine that his class is a nuisance
that should be summarily abated. So, as a rule, they sided with the
rebellion; but that rule has notable exceptions.
There were no warmer or wiser friends of the Union than the Duke of
Argyll, Lord Carlisle, and others; and it should be remembered that
although the class made no secret of their leanings, and many of them,
I believe, subscribed largely to the Confederate loan, no motion hostile
to the Union was ever even discussed in the House of Lords. They have
lost their money and seen the defeat of the cause which they favoured--a
defeat so thorough, I trust, that that cause will never again be able to
raise its head on this continent. I believe they have learnt much from
the lesson, and that partly from the teaching of your war, partly from
other causes to which I have no time to refer, they are far more in
sympathy at this time with the nation than they have ever yet been.
Of course, those who hang round and depend upon the aristocracy went
with them--far too large a class, I am sorry to say, in our country, and
one whose voice is too apt to be heard in clubs and society. But Pall
Mall and Mayfair, and the journals and periodicals which echo the voices
of Pall Mall, do not mean much in England, though they are apt to talk
as though they did, and are sometimes taken at their word.
The great mercantile world comes next in order, and here, too, there was
a decided preponderance against you. The natural hatred of disturbances,
which dominates those whose main object in life is making money,
probably swayed the better men amongst them, who forgot altogether that
for that disturbance you were not responsible. The worse were carried
away by the hopes of gain, to be made out of the sore need of the States
in rebellion, and in defiance of the laws of their own country. But
amongst the most eminent, as well as in the rank and file of this class,
you had many warm friends, such as T. Baring and Kirkman Hodgson; and
the Union and Emancipation Societies, of which I shall speak presently,
found a number of their staunch supporters in their ranks. The
manufacturers of England were far more generous in their sympathies, as
my friend Mr. Mundella, who is present here to-night and was himself
a staunch friend, can witness. Cobden, Bright, and Forster were their
representatives, as well as the representatives of the great bulk of our
nation. I have no need to speak of them, for their names are honoured
here as they are at home.
Now, before I speak of your friends, let me first remind you that it is
precisely with that portion of the English nation of which I have been
speaking that your people come in contact when they are in our country.
An American generally has introductions which bring him into relations
more or less intimate with some sections of that society to which our
aristocracy gives its tone; or he is amongst us for business purposes,
and comes chiefly across our mercantile classes. I cannot but believe
that this fact goes far to explain the (to me) extraordinary prevalence
of the belief here, that the English nation was on the side of the
rebellion. That belief has, I hope and believe, changed considerably
since the waves of your mighty storm have begun to calm down, and I am
not without hopes that I may be able to change it yet somewhat more,
with some at least of those who have the patience and kindness to listen
to me this evening.
And now let me turn to those who were the staunch friends of the North
from the very outset. They were gathered from all ranks and all parts of
the kingdom. They were brought in by all sorts of motives. Some few had
studied your history, and knew that these Southern men had been the
only real enemies of their country on American soil since the War
of Independence. Many followed their old anti-slavery traditions
faithfully, and cast their lot at once against the slave-owners,
careless of the reiterated assertions, both on your side of the Atlantic
and ours, that the Union and not abolition was the issue. Many came
because they had learned to look upon your land as the great home for
the poor of all nations, and to love her institutions and rejoice in her
greatness as though they in some sort belonged to themselves. All felt
the tremendous significance of the struggle, and that the future
of their own country was almost as deeply involved as the future of
America. To all of them the noble words of one of your greatest poets
and staunchest patriots, which rang out in the darkest moments of the
first year of the war, struck a chord very deep in their hearts, and
expressed in undying words that which they were trying to utter:--
O strange New World, thet yit wast never young,
Whose youth from thee by gripin’ need was wrung,