CHAPTER V
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 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.
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?
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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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.