The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, August, 1864 | Page 5

the great nation they fought with. It was their political independence only. It secured nothing beyond that. Morally we were not independent. Socially, we were not independent. There was a time, we can all remember it, when we literally trembled before every cockney that strangled innocent aspirates at their birth. We had not secured our moral independence of Europe, and particularly not of our own kindred and people. We literally crouched at the feet of England, and begged for recognition like a poor, disowned relation. We scarcely knew what was right till England told us. We dare not accept a thing as wise, proper, or becoming till we had heard her verdict. What will England say? How will they think of this across the water? In all emergencies these were the questions thought, at least, if not spoken. We lived in perpetual terror of transatlantic opinion. Some cockney came to visit us. He might be a fool, a puppy, an intolerably bore, an infinite ass. It made no difference. He rode our consciousness like a nightmare. He and his note book dominated free America. 'What does he think of us? What will he say of us?' We actually grovelled before the creature, more than once begging for his good word, his kindly forbearance, his pity for our faults and failures. 'We know we are wicked, for we are republicans, O serene John! We are sinful, for we have no parish beadle. 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, 'Hold Hingland,' 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 re?nact 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 slightest consequence now what England may think on any matter American? Who has the curiosity to ask after an English opinion?
This much the war has done for us. We are at last a nation. We have found a conscience of our own. We have been forced to stand on our own national sense of right and wrong. We are independent morally as well as politically, in opinion as well as in government. We shall never turn our eyes again across the sea to ask what any there may say or think of us. We have found that perhaps we do not understand them. We have certainly found that they do not understand us. We have taken the stand which every great people is obliged to take soon or late. We are sufficient for ourselves. Our own