The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-12-21 00:00:00

DEAN STANLEY ON AMERICAN
HISTORY.

Dean Stanley, President for the year of the Mid-
land Institute, delivered the inaugural address of the
winter session in the theatre of the Institute, Birming-
ham, on Monday night. He said that, instead of en-
larging on the commonplace topics of education or
literature, which would be equally advantageous at
any time or in any place, be proposed to say a few
words .suggested by a recent journey to the United
States, and to deal with the purely historical as-
pect of the question. There were two remarks
which an Englishman constantly heard from the
lips of Americans, uttered with a kind of plaintive
apology: "We are a young people," and "We have
no antiquities." The truth of the first of these remarks
everyone must admit, the truth of the second he
ventured to question. The history of the United States
might be said to class itself into four pr.ncipal epochs,
which emerge from the level to which the larger part
of its annals are confined. The first epoch was what
they might call the era of the founders. The second
was that in which the great French and English
nations contended for the possession of the American
continent. The third was the War of Independence;
and the fourth, the war between North and South.
Dean Stanley then proceeded to say that when we
saw how young, how new, how primitive was
the form of American history and American
society revealed to us, the possibility, nay, the proba-
bility that there was still a long course to be run—that
the foundation of these States was, as Penn said of
Pennsylvania, a noble experiment which it depends
upon themselves, under God, to accomplish or to ruin.
There was, on the whole, in the mass of the people
something of the same self-control and common
sense and love of freedom and obedience to law on
which we pride ourselves, and which we are glad to
recognize in our descendants. And these points of
contrast between the mother country and the daugh-
ter States not only were themselves encouraging, but
they derive additional force from the guarantee which
they gave, that the union between the two, though
severed by the revolution of the last century, was in
the essential elements of character and social sym-
pathy yet unbroken. It was a solemn responsibility
which the recollections of American history impressed
upon us, that as we were their fathers, so in large
measure we are responsible for them, our children;
responsible because our good or evil actions still pro-
duce a direct impression on their susceptible minds.
Commercial dishonesty, blind political partisanship,
demagogic strategems, frivolous luxury in English so-
ciety, are a strong incentive to any like vices which ap-
pear in the kindred stock, and on the other hand every
attempt on our part to maintain refinement of manners,
truthful dealing, a policy that does not tend to a
popular fashion, simplicity, and self-control in social
life, act and have acted with immense force in pro-
moting the like virtues beyond the Atlantic. Not
only they, in their youth and freshness, but we in our
green old age, need to be reminded that we also, in
spite of our long ancestral traditions and "the ancient
inbred integrity" of the English nation, have kindrcd
dangers threatening us on the right hand and on the
left. Our safety, like their=, lies in listening to the
voice of those few noble souls and high intelligences
who rise above the passions of party and the sordid
interests of the moment, who have the wisdom not
merely to denounce, but to discriminate, and desire
not merely to preserve or to destroy, but to improve
and bring to perfection the inheritance committed to
our trust.