12th Jan.
Our United States correspondent in his latest letter received drew attention briefly to the important article in a recent issue of Scribner's Magazine by the Right Hon. J. Chamberlain, headed " Recent Developments of Policy in the United States and their Relation Anglo-American Alliance." Thearticle deserves a longer notice than our correspondent was able to give it in his letter. It is a full and able statement of the situation, so full, in fact, that it is difficult to summarise it within the limits of a couplet newspaper articles. Mr. Chamberlain begins by saying In the course of the last few months a great and noteworthy change has come over the relations between the United States and Great Britain. It is not due to the action of Governments, and does not follow from any formal treaty oF from any change of policy on cither side.
It isa quickening of popular sentiment and a growth of mutual appreciation, which, in suddenness and strength, may without exaggeration, be compared to an explosion.
Throughout the last thirty years, says Mr. Chamberlain, the desire for closer union with the United States has been growing in the people of the United Kingdom. "Even the occasional harshness of dispatches from the State department, or the rejection of treaties of Reciproci Arbitration by the Senate, have to disturb our confidence, or to shake our permanent good will.... It cannot be said that this attitude has been always reciprocated. It is true that in private life an Englishman in the United States has never failed to find the greatest courtesy and the most lavish hospitality: but the Press has, in the past, given frequent expression to scornful criticism and unfavourable fiance judgment of all things English, while ponsciens in search of a cry have een too ready to court? popularity by twisting the lion's tail." These things, and the habit of representing Englishmen as_ tyrannical, selfish, Uustering, and cowardly, the oppressors of Ireland, India, and Egypt, are recalled in order to mark the greatness of the present transforma~ tion. Mr. Chamberlain notes that some of the greatest American statesmen have urged the value of a good understanding between the two peoples The last State paperfwritten by President. Lincoln before his ination was the reply drafted by him, and subsequently read by President Johnson to the British Minister on his presentation, and it contained these words: "The interests of civilisation and humanity require that the two Nations should be friends. I have always known and accepted it as a fact, honourable to both. countries, that the Queen of England is a sincere and honest well-wisher of the United States; and have Deen equally frank and explicit in the opinion that the friendship of the United States toward Great Britain is enjoined by all the considerations of interest and of sentiment affecting the character of both."
And similarly General Grant, writing from his death-bed the concluding passages of his Memoirs, leaves as a legacy to his countrymen this expression of his opinion: England and the United States are natural allies and should be the best of friends. They speak one language and are related by blood and other ties. We toxether, or even cither separately, are hetter qualified than any other people to establish commerce between all the nationalities of the word." And then he goes on to say, in words that have a special interest and application at the present time: "England governs her own colonies, and particular-those embracing the people of different races from her own, better than any other nation. She is just to the conquered but gives the benefit of labour to the labour.
She makes them self-supporting, but er. She docs not seem to look upon the Colonies as outside possessions which she is at liberty to work for the Home Government."
Mr. Chamberlain notes that the British people, while necessarily neutral during the late war, found it impossible "to conceal their sympathy with the objects for which the war had been waged, and their satisfaction at the promptness and the completeness of the results." He asks: " How far will this development of international feeling lead us? What are the limits which the traditional policy of the two countries will necessarily impose? Is it visionary to speak ofan ultimate alliance, or has the dream of a league of the English-speaking people been suddenly brought within the region of sober and practical statesmanship?" The British nation, he says, would welcome this conclusion; but it would agree with Washington in deprecating any permanent or general alliance Any attempt to pledge the two nations beforehand to combined defensive and offensive action in all circumstances must inevitably break down and be a source of danger instead of strength. All therefore that the most sanguine advocate of an al-fiance can contemplate is that the United States and Great Britain should keep close touch with each other, and that, whenever their policy and their interests are identical, they should be prepared to concert together the necessary measures for their defence. It is to such a course of action that Washington seems to point when he says: Taking care always to keep ourselves, by suitable establishments, in a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies."
Mr. Chamberlain points out that the influences which are working to bring us together are not merely those of kinship, language, literature, law, and history, but that our processes of reasoning on all subjects, political or religious, social or moral, and ° the root principles from which we proceed, are identical. When the United States decided that' they could no longer tolerate the condition of things in Cuba, the Great Powers of the Continent were alarmed and suspicious Great Britain alone, basing her judgment omber own feelings and experience, sympathised with the national sentiment in America, and, believing with Mrs. Browning, that —a nation may act Unselfishly—shiver a lance (As the least of her sons may, in fact), And not for a cause of finunee,— sought for the springs of action, not in the excesses of jingoes or the greed of interested individuals, but in the great moral forces which move a free people in the presence of injustice and wrong, perpetrutad against helpless men and innocent women and children, Mr. Chamberlain es on to point out that while sympathy and sentiment are good things, interest has also to be considered. When an understanding was first talked of between the two English-speaking Powers, the foreign Press argued that America's love for England would not outlast the war with Spain, and that England would want America to repay her by assistance in her personal quarrels. The wish is father to the thought we do not believe that America's feeling for the old country is so fleeting; and England, which is not an og ive country, is prepared to fight her own battles, if she has to fight. It is a pity that we did not ask for the active support of the United States in the matter of the Armenian massacres. If at that time America had allowed her fleet to ce-operate with the British navy, "it is almost certain that the other Powers would have held aloof, in presence of such a combination, and a great and bloodless service might have been rendered to humanity." Now there is probably an opening for the United States to ce-operate with England in keeping the greatest potential market in the world, China, open, with its incalculable possibilities, to all nations on equal terms, Here Mr. Chamberlain closes the first part of his article, and here we must leave him for the present,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.