THE SELFISH CAUSES WHICH PROVOKE AND SUPPORT AN ALLIANCE,
EXAMINED
I NOW pass into another sphere of thought not less important
than the one I have just left, but where the motives found are
of a purely selfish and practical nature. It is said that the
foundation of all human action is either sympathy or
selfishness.[1] I have appealed to the first, I now invoke the
common interests of the two nations--a selfish motive, but one
of inestimable importance in the study of the question of an
Anglo-Saxon union.
I.--THE COMMON INTERESTS OF BOTH COUNTRIES DEMAND
CO-OPERATION--IDENTITY OF INTERNATIONAL ACTION
It is with nations as with individuals; the larger and more
valuable the commercial relations grow, the greater necessity
there is for close, frank, and cordial ties between them. The
heart must follow the pocket. While the laws of business are
based upon inexorable principles of supply and demand, and the
efforts of producers must be to sell to {143} consumers the best
goods at the lowest prices, which stimulates rivalry and trade,
yet two men cannot be successful partners in commercial affairs
unless they act in perfect sympathy and accord. Nor can a
merchant retain his customers unless there be a certain amount
of mutual confidence and respect existing between them. Close
international relations with our best customer, therefore,
appeal directly to our interest--to our pockets.
I wish in this connection to recall a piece of history, unknown
to some, overlooked by others, and ignored by most of us. I do
not use it as a makeweight--but only as exhibiting one phase of
our development. It was with the aid of English capital that our
commercial life in its broad sense began. English financial
support originally enabled us to open and build up our country;
to attain a point where our phenomenal and natural conditions
propelled our advance without outside aid. Whether English
capital sought investment and expected profit to result
therefrom--an expectation many, many times unfulfilled, it was
her money which we used to aid in our development by the opening
of this great country through large and small systems of
railroad and water communications.
Even if we had paid all these advances, which we have not, we
should not forget it was English and not French or Russian money
which sent us moving towards great national prosperity; and
while this consideration is not paramount it should count for
something in this discussion.
{144}
Once begun, the commercial and financial relations of the two
countries have broadened and deepened until, to-day, they are so
intricate and immense that we are practically one mercantile
community. We are partners and co-helpers in finance, industry,
and commerce. It is not necessary to cite full statistics. They
are known, and have been used to cover every phase of our
commercial history. We are commercially and financially so
intertwined that it is impossible to unravel the cords of
interest that bind us together.
Exports of merchandise from the United States for the year
ending June 30,
1899 1900 1901
Into the United
Kingdom $511,778,705 $533,829,374 $631,266,263
Into all other
parts of Europe. 424,823,388 506,337,938 504,825,997
Imports of merchandise into the United States for the year
ending June 30,
1899 1900 1901
From the United
Kingdom $118,488,217 $159,583,060 $143,365,901
From all other
parts of Europe. 235,396,317 280,926,420 286,070,279[2]
Pure interest, therefore, is always at work to cement and
tighten our relations with England; and in testing the motives
which influence human conduct, which one can be found stronger
than self-interest?
{145}
II.--SELF-PRESERVATION--PROTECTION--NECESSITY
Of the different motives which individuals or nations invoke to
defend or justify their actions, none are higher, or more
universally recognised than those of
self-preservation--protection--necessity--which are
interchangeable terms.
Self-preservation is a broad and essential attribute of
individual and national existence. It is not confined to a mere
present danger, but extends to the future, and anticipates evils
which are growing or maturing; it scents the approach of danger
and prepares for it in advance.
The people of the United States are unconscious of any present
external danger, and perhaps none exists. But it is a very
short-sighted and foolish policy to confine our politics and
diplomacy to mere present conditions. The brightest sunshine is
followed by the gloomiest skies. The Spanish War revealed what a
European alliance against us without England's aid might mean.
The very wisdom of to-day, therefore, forces us to look into
futurity. It is simple prudence to cast our eyes around the
civilised world, and study and endeavour to comprehend the
movements and directions of the other political bodies. Are not
our motions as a nation jealously and eagerly watched by the
European powers? While we are secure now, is it safe to assume
that we shall always be? England, on the other hand, is in daily
peril. She is the target for all European combinations. Envy and
hatred pursue her hourly,--very causeless envy and hatred, as it
seems to me, or, if not causeless, {146} arising only from that
spirit of legitimate enterprise in which we again are so much
like her. To whom should she look in a moment of real danger? In
what direction should she cast her eyes? Should it not be upon
her own family,--her own offspring? Are we so blind that we
cannot see that the decimation or destruction of England's power
is a blow to ourselves? And what position would we occupy with
the combined powers against us, with England as their ally, or
acting as a neutral, or (what is most horrible to conceive)
powerless to aid us?
What is the present preponderating duty of our people? Is it not
to encourage, extend, and protect the Anglo-Saxon race wherever
it is to be found?
The principle of self-preservation is plain and universally
recognised; the occasion and necessity for its application are
equally clear. The salvation and perpetuation of the Anglo-Saxon
race furnishes a powerful, if not a preponderating motive for
perfect accord between the United States and the British Empire.
The expansion and preservation of the race are to be attained
only by union, which self-interest inspires. The failure to
adopt it is an act of _felo de se_.
III.--DUTY
I have said before, in substance,[3] that a nation has a duty to
perform to itself and to the outside world, precisely as an
individual has a duty to fulfil {147} to himself and his
fellow-beings. The entire limit of either's obligation is not
performed by simply attending to his own selfish needs.
The more civilised we are the clearer this duty is enjoined. As
Demosthenes said: "To a Democracy nothing is more essential than
scrupulous regard to equity and justice." A nation does not
exist merely for pure selfishness--or simply to protect the
lives, enhance the fortunes, and secure the happiness of its own
immediate citizens. It cannot erect a wall around its people and
live entirely within itself. This is as unnatural as it is
impossible. There must be intercommunion with other powers and
peoples. To render its full duty to its citizens, there must be
intermingling with outside nations. Through these means its own
people become richer, more prosperous, and cultivated, and the
nations with whom it associates benefit proportionately from the
intercourse. _With us there can be no such thing as national
isolation_. Especially is this remark applicable to the United
States _at this time_; on the eve of embarking upon a colonial
policy. Our hands once placed upon a colony can never be
withdrawn. This is one of the characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon
race and in our case strongly supported by duty. We shall
benefit the colonists in all ways, but they will remain part of
our system until it is dissolved.
Our duty, growing out of the best and noblest conceptions of the
origin and purpose of social existence, should teach us, along
with our material interests and often by means of them, to
propagate {148} and extend everywhere the principles upon which
our civilisation is founded.
I do not mean that this thought should inspire conquest--for
mere enlargement of territory or other aggrandisement. On the
contrary, in our dealings with and treatment of other nations,
the abstract principles of right should never be forgotten.
But, wherever we land in our national pilgrimage, either by
conquest or purchase, we must reign supreme.
I take it for granted that our views upon these subjects are the
most humane and liberal. At least this is our great boast. We
claim to lead civilisation. Is this assumption justified? The
history of our lives from our national birth until the present
time must be appealed to.[4] It is perhaps true that we have not
always lived up to our ideals, but these ideals have never been
destroyed. They may have been obscured, but the clouds which
covered them have lifted again, and they have reappeared in
their original vigour and beauty. It seems to be a marked
characteristic of an Anglo-Saxon to propagate and push his
principles everywhere. Without boasting, unconsciously, he goes
on to the mark, and often with an appearance of cynical
indifference. Inwardly he is not content unless all whom he
meets participate in his enlightenment, and when it becomes in
any degree difficult or impracticable, it may be assumed that
the fault is not wholly his. Where racial or other antagonism is
so pronounced as to render assimilation impossible, {149} there
is at least the minimum of evil in the onward march to a higher
plane. The idea of most other nations is to limit their national
principles to themselves. They seem to take no real interest in
sowing their political seeds in foreign soils. Their objects are
purely selfish.
It is our contention that the influence of the Anglo-Saxon race
has been for good everywhere; that its principles have found
lodgment in some form or other in all governments; that its laws
and customs have percolated more or less into all political
systems; and that all existing political bodies have in
substance, if not in form, consciously or unconsciously
engrafted into their systems some of the notions and principles
of liberty and justice as applied by the English-speaking
people. England has been called, and truly, "the mother of
constitutions and the constitutional system." Our principles of
national and individual liberty are so inseparable from true
government that where they are not found, a real, beneficial,
political institution does not exist.
As Mr. Webster said[5]:
"Now, Gentlemen, I do not know what practical views or what
practical results may take place from this great expansion of
the power of the two branches of Old England. It is not for me
to say; I only can see, that on this continent all is to be
Anglo-American from Plymouth Rock to the Pacific seas, from the
north pole to California. That is certain; and in the Eastern
world I only see that you can hardly place a {150} finger on a
map of the world and be an inch from an English settlement.
Gentlemen, if there be anything in the supremacy of races, the
experiment now in progress will develop it. If there be any
truth in the idea that those who issued from the great Caucasian
fountain, and spread over Europe, are to react on India and on
Asia, and to act on the whole Western world, it may not be for
us, nor our children, nor our grandchildren to see it, but it
will be for our descendants of some generation to see the extent
of that progress and dominion of the favoured races. For myself,
I believe there is no limit fit to be assigned to it by the
human mind, because I find at work everywhere, on both sides of
the Atlantic, under various forms and degrees of restriction on
the one hand, and under various degrees of motive and stimulus
on the other hand, and in these branches of a common race, the
great principle of _the freedom of human thought and the
respectability of individual character_ . . . I find everywhere
an elevation of the character of man as man, an elevation of the
individual as a component part of society; I find everywhere a
rebuke of the idea that the many are made for the few, or that
government is anything but an _agency_ for mankind. And I care
not beneath what zone, frozen, temperate, or torrid; I care not
what complexion, white or brown; I care not under what
circumstances of climate or cultivation, if I can find a race of
men on an inhabitable spot of earth whose general sentiment it
is, and whose general feeling it is, that government is made for
man--man as a religious, moral, and social being--and not man
for government, there I know that I shall find prosperity and
happiness."
Following in the wake of these premises, therefore, arises our
duty to propagate Anglo-Saxon principles; to increase and
multiply its peoples; to strengthen and extend its influences;
to carry its banners everywhere a human foot can tread and human
energy be felt.
Some may think that their interests concur with {151} their
prejudices to prevent the union of the Anglo-Saxon people, no
matter in what form, or for what object, the alliance is
created. It would be difficult to define these interests, but
whether they be real or unreal, substantial or immaterial, no
attention should be given to any opposition supposedly arising
out of them. If we are actuated by pure motives, which are made
clear and are understood, we shall emerge from the struggle as
the race always has, in victory.
And thus we have linked to the _natural; sympathetic_ influences
which operate to bring us closer together, the elements of
_self-interest_ and _self-preservation, protection_, and
_necessity_; and, finally, to crown all, a high and mighty
_duty_.
Here are centred all the motives of selfishness and all the
influences of sympathy which are necessary to create and
permanently continue a great political intermarriage,--a
combination and a form indeed upon which "every god did seem to
set his seal" to give the world the assurance of a great,
prosperous and imperishable union.
[1] See _Buckle_, vol. ii., p. 334 _et seq._
[2] Review of the World's Commerce, issued from the Bureau of
Foreign Commerce, Department of State, Washington, D. C., 1902.
[3] _Ante_, p. 62 _et seq._
[4] _Ante_, p. 71 _et seq._
[5] Speech of Daniel Webster, delivered on the 22nd of December,
1843, at the Public Dinner of the New England Society of New
York, in Commemoration of the Landing of the Pilgrims.
{152}