Principles and Issues of the American Struggle [pp. 410-432]

THE AMERICAN STRUGGLE.
of the great unended struggle that, with more or less intensity,
has arrayed the Americans against each other ever since the
Declaration of Independence, first in moral and afterwards in
physical contention, can look with apathy on the course of events
in that country? We may not always like the Americans; but
we never can forget that they are our kindred. We cannot, too,
but reflect at times that what they are we might become; and
that they are at worst or best but Anglo-Saxons, freed from the
sobering influences of a thousand years of settled government.
They possess a boundless continent and boundless liberty. They
have no masters but the laws which they make, and the majorities into which they range themselves. They have none of
the old grievances which afflict a crowded country or an ancient realm. They have no Established Church at one section
to grumble at; no aristocracy to offend another by superiority of privilege or power. They have none but themselves to
blame for any evil that may befall them. They have a fair field
for every honest exertion, and the best chances, so far as history
records, that were ever offered to an intelligent andt energetic
race to fulfill the great ends of social and national existence.
Have they solved the question of government, of human happiness, of progress, of individual right? Is their liberty a true
liberty, or the despotism of a multitude, assuming the forms but
not possessing the reality of freedom? And provided the English in the Old World-on the native soil and home of the racewere to become as thoroughly democratic in their political action
as their cousins over the water-should we too experience the
fate, good or bad as it may prove, of those other Englishmen
who have cast themselves adrift from old authority, old associations, old ties, and old principles? It is questions such as these
which give to American politics their abiding though changeful
interest. They come home to English statesmen; they appeal
to thinkers and to men of business alike, and cannot but have a
salutary influence on English history, if our statesmen are wise
enough to profit by example, and are not mad enough to Amnericanize the constitution of Great Britain before they see whether
the Americans will not have to Anglicize theirs in order to save
themselves from wars and insurrections, and the despotism that
ultimately crowns the evil work of mob-rule and too much liberty.
't'he Americans of the highest class of intellect have never,
from the first establishment of the Union, been very hopeful of
the future. Radicals and doctrinaires at home may see a bright
and glorious destiny for Republicanism in the Western World;
but the Western World itself, as far as its most thoughtful students are concerned, is by no mean so certain that Utopia has
become so little of a dream as observers on this side of the Atlantic, who see the best and know nothing of the worst side of
the great American experiment, are willing and many of them
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