|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 7
Occasion of serious difficulty, indeed, should not arise here. Unlike
the historical instance just cited, the two nations whose interests
have come now into contact--Great Britain and the United States--are
so alike in inherited traditions, habits of thought, and views of
right, that injury to the one need not be anticipated from the
predominance of the other in a quarter where its interests also
predominate. Despite the heterogeneous character of the immigration
which the past few years have been pouring into our country, our
political traditions and racial characteristics still continue
English--Mr. Douglas Campbell would say Dutch, but even so the stock
is the same. Though thus somewhat gorged with food not wholly to its
taste, our political digestion has contrived so far to master the
incongruous mass of materials it has been unable to reject; and if
assimilation has been at times imperfect, our political constitution
and spirit remain English in essential features. Imbued with like
ideals of liberty, of law, of right, certainly not less progressive
than our kin beyond sea, we are, in the safeguards deliberately placed
around our fundamental law, even more conservative than they. That
which we received of the true spirit of freedom we have kept--liberty
and law--not the one or the other, but both. In that spirit we not
only have occupied our original inheritance, but also, step by step,
as Rome incorporated the other nations of the peninsula, we have added
to it, spreading and perpetuating everywhere the same foundation
principles of free and good government which, to her honor be it said,
Great Britain also has maintained throughout her course. And now,
arrested on the south by the rights of a race wholly alien to us, and
on the north by a body of states of like traditions to our own, whose
freedom to choose their own affiliations we respect, we have come to
the sea. In our infancy we bordered upon the Atlantic only; our youth
carried our boundary to the Gulf of Mexico; to-day maturity sees us
upon the Pacific. Have we no right or no call to progress farther in
any direction? Are there for us beyond the sea horizon none of those
essential interests, of those evident dangers, which impose a policy
and confer rights?
This is the question that long has been looming upon the brow of a
future now rapidly passing into the present. Of it the Hawaiian
incident is a part--intrinsically, perhaps, a small part--but in its
relations to the whole so vital that, as has been said before, a wrong
decision does not stand by itself, but involves, not only in principle
but in fact, recession along the whole line. In our natural, necessary,
irrepressible expansion, we are come here into contact with the
progress of another great people, the law of whose being has impressed
upon it a principle of growth which has wrought mightily in the past,
and in the present is visible by recurring manifestations. Of this
working, Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, Egypt, Aden, India, in geographical
succession though not in strict order of time, show a completed chain;
forged link by link, by open force or politic bargain, but always
resulting from the steady pressure of a national instinct, so powerful
and so accurate that statesmen of every school, willing or unwilling,
have found themselves carried along by a tendency which no
individuality can resist or greatly modify. Both unsubstantial rumor
and incautious personal utterance have suggested an impatient desire
in Mr. Gladstone to be rid of the occupation of Egypt; but scarcely
has his long exclusion from office ended when the irony of events
signalizes his return thereto by an increase in the force of
occupation. Further, it may be noted profitably of the chain just
cited, that the two extremities were first possessed--first India,
then Gibraltar, far later Malta, Aden, Cyprus, Egypt--and that, with
scarce an exception, each step has been taken despite the jealous
vexation of a rival. Spain has never ceased angrily to bewail
Gibraltar. "I had rather see the English on the heights of
Montmartre," said the first Napoleon, "than in Malta." The feelings of
France about Egypt are matter of common knowledge, not even
dissembled; and, for our warning be it added, her annoyance is
increased by the bitter sense of opportunity rejected.
It is needless here to do more than refer to that other chain of
maritime possessions--Halifax, Bermuda, Santa Lucia, Jamaica--which
strengthen the British hold upon the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and the
Isthmus of Panama. In the Pacific the position is for them much less
satisfactory--nowhere, perhaps, is it less so, and from obvious natural
causes. The commercial development of the eastern Pacific has been far
later, and still is less complete, than that of its western shores. The
latter when first opened to European adventure were already the seat of
ancient economies in China and Japan, furnishing abundance of curious
and luxurious products to tempt the trader by good hopes of profit. The
western coast of America, for the most part peopled by savages, offered
little save the gold and silver of Mexico and Peru, and these were
monopolized jealously by the Spaniards--not a commercial nation--during
their long ascendency. Being so very far from England and affording so
little material for trade, Pacific America did not draw the enterprise
of a country the chief and honorable inducement of whose seamen was the
hope of gain, in pursuit of which they settled and annexed point after
point in the regions where they penetrated, and upon the routes leading
thither. The western coasts of North America, being reached only by the
long and perilous voyage around Cape Horn, or by a more toilsome and
dangerous passage across the continent, remained among the last of the
temperate productive seaboards of the earth to be possessed by white
men. The United States were already a nation, in fact as well as in
form, when Vancouver was exploring Puget Sound and passed first through
the channel separating the mainland of British America from the island
which now bears his name. Thus it has happened that, from the late
development of British Columbia in the northeastern Pacific, and of
Australia and New Zealand in the southwestern, Great Britain is found
again holding the two extremities of a line, between which she must
inevitably desire the intermediate links; nor is there any good reason
why she should not have them, except the superior, more urgent, more
vital necessities of another people--our own. Of these links the
Hawaiian group possesses unique importance--not from its intrinsic
commercial value, but from its favorable position for maritime and
military control.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|