Such is our case as to the cruisers which did you so much damage. I believe it to be true. If we are mistaken, however, you will get such damages for each and all of these vessels as the arbitrator may award. We reserve nothing. I as an Englishman am deeply grieved that any of my countrymen, for base love of gain or any other motive, should have dared to defy the proclamation of my Sovereign, speaking in the nation’s name. I earnestly long for the time when by wise consultation between our nations, and the modification of the public law bearing on such cases, not only such acts as these, but all war at sea, shall be rendered impossible. The United States and England have only to agree in this matter, and there is an end of naval war through the whole world.
In 1863 the horizon was still dark. Splendid as your efforts had been, and magnificent as was the attitude of your nation, tried in the fire as few nations have been in all history, those efforts had not yet been crowned with any marked success. With us it was the darkest in the whole long agony, for in it came the crisis of that attempt of the Emperor of the French to inveigle us in a joint recognition of the Confederacy, on the success of which his Mexican adventure was supposed to hang. The details of those negotiations have never been made public. All we know is, that Mr. Lindsay and Mr. Roebuck went to Paris and had long conferences with Napoleon, the result of which was the effort of Mr. Roebuck (now in turn the representative of the rebels in our Parliament) to force or persuade our Government into this alliance. Then came the final crisis. On the 30th of June 1863, a day memorable in our history as in yours, at the very time that your army of the Potomac was hurrying through the streets of Gettysburg to meet the swoop of those terrible Southern legions, John Bright stood on the floor of our House of Commons, on fire with that righteous wrath which has so often lifted him above the heads of other English orators.
He dragged the whole plot to light, quoted the former attacks of Mr. Roebuck on his Imperial host, and then turning to the Speaker, went on, “And now, sir, the honourable and learned gentleman has been to Paris, introduced there by the honourable member for Sunderland, and he has sought to become, as it were, a co-conspirator with the French Emperor, to drag this country into a policy which I maintain is as hostile to its interests as it would be degrading to its honour.” From that moment the cause of the rebellion was lost in England; for by the next mails came the news of the three days’ fight, and the melting away of Longstreet’s corps in the final and desperate efforts to break the Federal line on the slopes of little Round Top. A few weeks more and we heard of the surrender of Vicksburg, and no more was heard in our Parliament of recognition or mediation.
I have now, my friends, stated the case between our countries from an Englishman’s point of view, of course, but I hope fairly and temperately. At any rate, I have only spoken of matters within my own personal knowledge, and have only quoted from public records which are as open to every one of you as they are to me. Search them, I beseech you, and see whether I am right or not. If wrong, it is from no insular prejudices or national conceit, and you will at any rate think kindly and bear with the errors of one who has always loved your nation well, through good report and evil report, and is now bound to it by a hundred new and precious ties. If right, all I beg of you is, to use your influences that old hatreds and prejudices may disappear, and America and England may march together, as nations redeemed by a common Saviour, toward the goal which is set for them in a brighter future.
Shall it be love, or hate, John?
It’s you thet’s to decide;
Ain’t your bonds held by Fate, John,
Like all the world’s beside?
So runs the end of the solemn appeal in “Jonathan to John,” the poem which suggested the title of this lecture. It comes from one who never deals in wild words. I am proud to be able to call him a very dear and old friend. He is the American writer who did more than any other to teach such of us in the old country as ever learned them at all, the rights and wrongs of this great struggle of yours. Questions asked by such men can never be safely left on one side. Well, then, I say wehaveanswered them. We know—no nation, I believe, knows better, or confesses daily with more of awe—that our bonds are held by fate; that a strict account of all the mighty talents which have been committed to us will be required of us English, though we do live in a sea fortress, in which the gleam of steel drawn in anger has not been seen for more than a century. We know that we are very far from being what we ought to be; we know that we have great social problems to work out, and, believe me, we have set manfully to work to solve them,—problems which go right down amongst the roots of things, and the wrong solution of which may shake the very foundations of society. We have to face them manfully, after the manner of our race, within the four corners of an island not bigger than one of your large States; while you have the vast elbow-room of this wonderful continent, with all its million outlets and opportunities for every human being who is ready to work. Yes, our bonds are indeed held by fate, but we are taking strict account of the number and amount of them, and mean, by God’s help, to dishonour none of them when the time comes for taking them up. We reckon, too, some of us, that as years roll on, and you get to understand us better, we may yet hear the words “Well done, brother,” from this side of the Atlantic; and if the strong old islander, who, after all, is your father, should happen some day to want a name on the back of one of his bills, I, for one, should not wonder to hear that at the time of presentation the name Jonathan is found scrawled across there in very decided characters. For we have answered that second question, too, so far as it lies in our power.
It will be love and not hate between the two freest of the great nations of the earth, if our decision can so settle it. There will never be anything but love again, if England has the casting vote. For remember that the force of the decision of your great struggle has not been spent on this continent. Your victory has strengthened the hands and hearts of those who are striving in the cause of government, for the people by the people, in every corner of the Old World. In England the dam that had for so many years held back the free waters burst in the same year that you sheathed your sword, and now your friends there are triumphant and honoured; and if those who were your foes ever return to power you will find that the lesson of your war has not been lost on them. In another six years you will have finished the first century of your national life. By that time you will have grown to fifty millions, and will have subdued and settled those vast western regions, which now in the richness of their solitudes, broken only by the panting of the engine as it passes once a day over some new prairie line, startles the traveller from the Old World. I am only echoing the thoughts and prayers of my nation in wishing you God-speed in your great mission. When that centenary comes round, I hope, if I live, to see the great family of English-speaking nations girdling the earth with a circle of free and happy communities, in which the angels’ message of peace on earth and good-will amongst men may not be still a mockery and delusion. It rests with you to determine whether this shall be so or not. May the God of all the nations of the earth, who has so marvellously prospered you hitherto, and brought you through so great trials, guide you in your decision!