The Sun.
London, England, 1866-08-13 00:00:00

America as an Ally.

Cornelius O'Dowd is a pleasant, truthful writer, and in
this month's number of Blackwood takes his text from an
articlo in the Pall Mall Gazette, styled—" America as an
Ally." Corny begins with a frank confession of his owu
error.

" I go," he says, " with every word of the Pall Mall
paper, and not entirely without some sins of the kind on
my conscience. I recognise what mischief mere petulant
and snappish remarks on national traits have done to the
good understanding between America and ourselves."
We complain of something beyond snappish and petu-
lant remarks. Our stand is made against national insti-
tutions misrepresented ; national objects, wishes, and
aspirations distorted; national manners, habits, and
thoughts caricatured. We maintain that the.example has
been set, and persistently followed, by England; and we
repeat that this country has lent herself as a most formid-
able ally to the bitterest enemies she ever had, in a large
body working incessantly in the Union in a hostile spirit
against her—the Irish in America. "It sounds like a
paradox, but 1. believe it to be strictly fact, that the
common language we employ, which should have been,
one might well suppose, the best bond of union between
us, has actually served to widen the breach, and exasperate
the soreness between us." This is indeed a fact, and one
well worth deep consideration. The initiative was taken
by English writers, men and women, whose main object
was to write a telling book which could command a ready
sale. We profer hearing our neighbours abused to praised,
we laugh at peculiarities, foibles, and caricatures well
sketched, which throw ridicule on those who we know in
our inmost hearts are rapidly outstripping us in the race
of material well-being, who are growing into greater con-
sequence than ourselves. What would be said if we, in
private life, acted the part we have done towards our
kindred over the Atlantic. if we published our sarcasms,
our strictures, our caricatures, invented the greatest ab-
surdities, and then sent these papers in bushels to those
we attacked, our relations with our neighbours would soon
become complicated. Our cousins, who had before regarded
us as the elder branch, the head of an honourable family,
who, in spite of serious quarrels in which they had been
the victors, were inclined to venerate the • seat whence
their race had sprung, and the old family who still kept up
the dignity of the clan, might be expected to turn savagely
from such wanton, unjust, and impolitic attacks; and so it
has been.

" Why this regard and delicacy for the efforts of Go-
vernments of such States as those of South America, for
whom we care nothing, and why all these lavish comments
and searching remarks on those whose qualities for good
or ill are unquestionably all our own ? Why, I would
ask, single out all that we can for praise on ono side, and
only record what wo can find fault with or object to on
the other ?. I believe the reason to bo this, that in treat-
ing of the Spaniard, the Frenchman, or the Russian, we
always discuss his habits and his modes of thought as
those which have reference to certain things in climate
and country different from our own; we accept them as ways
which are not our ways, but those of a people who have
other measures and other standards, and which',' though
we are not prepared to adopt, we in no wise'wish to dis-
parage. We make no such allowance when wo come to
discuss Americans. We bring them all to the bar of
Piccadilly, and whatever falls short of that measure we
pronounce unworthy and inadmissable. The language
we used in common lent itself to this : we come to the
contest with the same weapon. If we quoted a speech
for reprobation, we had not to dilute the incriminate part
by translation ; we give the words of the speaker as he
spoke them, quite forgetting the while that this speaker
_
was addressing people essentially unlike our oTh•Dt,ere n
ids
whose tastes and requirements were not ours.
much eloquence in America, but there is much bombast
too, and popular audiences are not satisfied withN Now, had
that would fulfil all the canons of correct taste.
the speaker held forth in French or Spanish, them mere
difference of language would have tempered our criticism,
and we never should have dared to object to an illustra-
tion or a figure because it was not what habit had aeons-
Wined nf3 so With On Amnion, Speaking. the

Isame tongue with Burke, and Peel, and Derby, we at once
compare him with these, forgetting the while that in a
land where nature works in gigantic mood, where plain
and prairie, and forest and river are all immense, men
strain expression to keep pace with the world around
them, and there is a sort of rhythm between men's words
and the wonders of, creation that environ them."
Tho writer fairly puts the disadvantages of a Common
language, but he does not touch on the other side. If
our me limn of carrying evil thoughts and caricatures of
each other be the same, and facilitated the dissemination
of the evil, the medium is also the same in saying what is
honest and true, friendly and considerate. We could
neyer write France into a cordial love and alliance. All
our best things would be lost on the Spaniards and
Italians as pearls on swine. But the case is very different
with America. The nation responds at once to a friendly
tone. Their own journals catch it up, and spread the
feeling abroad with a celerity all their own. The change
which has lately come over England is already working a
most beneficial change in America. Late events have
made Americans better known and understood in Europe,
uortasnwuloaydluyft of one antiquated absurdity ? or
and the guns which obscured with their sulphurous
canopy so many a fatal field over the Union, have blown
away the mists and ignorance which grew with years till
thus rudely dispelled. The respect in which Americans is
theaway,
oeldt
sni as
havetSi
ho no
w shown,
a,stoibraggedsignificance
loudlytfi caatna cbe
us hsweehahi
and
abuse and sarcasm. "Have the
them out of one vulgar affectation ? "
e effect on both nations is exactly the re-
hsarcasmcannothc performedaeelvrdteaAmericanshiinvebbe
sypinardeepened.railedouo nobly,sneered
h;cteehd
verse. It is indeed the same as it would be on individuals.
Who suppose that they can draw inFolent caricatures of
friend Brown or Robinson, and that Dither of these parties
will at once amend his manners or reform his customs.
lfuelr- re'likktr that friend -Brown or-Itobinson win
wait on us with a horsewhip, and teach us better manners
and moro charity.
other as much as we do. Our needs are not mere poll.
" There are no two peoples in the world who want east

tical needs ; they are far finer and closer, and nearer the
heart than any such. America would be all the better
for borrowing some of that English reverence for what-
ever is old and time-honoured, for that veneration which
attaches to all that our ancestors cherished and cared for,
and would be none the worse for seeing in age something
besides decrepitude and decay ; and England might benefit
in her Colonial Government by observing how the manli-
ness of a people is promoted by self-dependence, and how
free institutions not only stimulate men to industry, but
actually quicken invention and sharpen ingenuity.
"The bad blood that has so long subsisted between the
two countries is that which we see prevail in certain
family quarrels, whore differences are embittered by the
minute knowledge of the finest traits of temperament, a
faniilarity with every cord of sensibility. And once more
I ask if it is not high time to say farewell to these
bickerings, which have certainly reacted unfavourably
on the characters of each ? "

It is indeed high time to try what a little consideration,
a little reserve, a little deference, even a little of what
courtesy each of us are accustomed to award to foreigners,
might accomplish ; to endeavour to teach that instead of
being natural enemies we are natural allies. No more

false notion, no more injurious idea could have got abroad
than that England was the hereditary enemy of America.
She is no more the hereditary enemy than two brothers

falling out, kicking and cuffing each other, and ending by
abuse; are born enemies. All our interests are in common,
there is not one adverse, not one which ought to cause an
angry word. Tho whole aspirations of the two peoples
should be absolutely the same. They are of one race, of
one language, laws and liberty entertained in common,
and spreading over the globe tho Anglo Saxon-race. Other
nations regard with dismay their' overwhelming and
growing influence. Mexico was conquered by France to
secure a counterpoise for the Latin nations. For this end
France occupied New Caledonia, and endeavoured to es-
tablish herself in Madagascar. With this view she made
efforts to resuscitate Spain. They see with dismay the
world conquered and subdued by the tido of emigration
which for some centuries has been flowing from England,
and the two leading peoples of the earth of the
same kin. The interests of these two nations are
positively the same, and the work before them is so grand
that it is impossible for human beings to conceive any-
thing more magnificent. It is to spread over the earth
Christianity, freedom, and material well-being. The idea,
then, of these leaders having the same mission and inte-
rests,'absolutely identical, being hostile, instead of working
in brotherly love, is positively absurd. It looks as if the
supreme folly of mankind enabled the Devil to thwart the
most beneficent work of the Creator in the welfare of the
human race, though against the direct interests of both
sections of the Anglo-Saxon people, and against common
sense and reason. Were these tivrt,Reation.nf
L 1111.11131. C Clll npr a chosen people two orabbod Wu
women, the means employed by the fiend could not have
been more contemptible. The result is due to the
writings of such a woman as Mrs.f.Trollopo, and such a
man as Dickens, and the retort such scurrilous things
bring back. The shafts rankle in the mind of a keenly
sensitive people, the more so that the arrows were winged
by feathers from their own eagle. They respected and
venerated those who thus wounded them, and hoped and
wished to raise in their elder kindred the admiration they
felt they were entitled to for the conduct of their affairs,
since they had severed the political connection.

" I wish I were in a position to give power to my
counsels, and I would say, now is the time not to be out-
done in generosity. Let there be no higgling, no bargain-
ing ; grasp manfully and warmly the hand that is out-
stretched to you, and let the feeling between the two
nations be—not the conventional amity of Cabinets, but
the hearty tone and affection of two kindred peoples.
"We have fishery rights to discuss, and there are some
unsettled claims about the Alabama which we refuse to
admit. Now is the time to settle both iu a spirit that will
show America we are not insensible to the value of her
friendship, or the force of her example. If it should be
said, whence comes this new ardour of Cornelius O'Dowd
for our American cousins ?—how has this new light
broken in upon him ? Has the condition of Europe, the
threatening attitude of France, the character of the man
who rules her, nothing to say to this sudden and strange
conversion? And my answer is, it is precisely out of
these causes that Isee the necessity of England having one
ally who is above being subsidised, but not above being
esteemed. It is because out of the present convulsions
may come a war in which France, strengthening herself by
the most powerful of the late combatants, may think fit to
begin that work of the revisal of the Treaties of 'l5,
which she has so significantly hinted at, and whose for-
mation she well knows was in the main the work of
England. It is because I see this, and I see besides we
have neither true friend nor well-wisher on the Continent
of Europe, I would draw closer to those who, once our
narrow squabbles are forgotten, could not but regard the
lyd
see country
herwith
ile affection,d b by
and would never stand coldly
overwhelming odds, or crushed
bo
to
ss
assailed
beneath the united forces of despotism. . . . In the love
that every educated American bears to England, in the
pride of her great history, her grand traditions, and her
noble literature there is a tie that, if the day of adversity
for us arise, will be seen to bind America, to our side and
our fortunes, even against the world. . . . My dread is,
the fear of English power once departed, the wealth of
England will be a temptation not to be resisted ; and if the
day of such evil should come, them is but one people in
the world who would not rejoice over our downfall, and
that people is American. They are the only ones who
would remember all the past gkxies of England—all that
she has done for liberty—all she has achieved for
civilisation. They are the only ones who will look
with forgiveness on our faults and failings, and bear
fully. in mind whatever of good or noble there
was in us. America well knows whence she derives
the great stamina of her nation. She knows it was not the
Dutchman, nor the Rhinelander, nor the Celt, that gave
her the mingled persistence and daring, the dogged re-
solve not to be conquered; and the patient endurance in
time of adversity, for which wo have no better adjective
than Anglo-Saxon. And she will not suffer the land which
stands to her in the sacred relation of a father to be in-
sulted or degraded.
"I have a wide acquaintance with Americans, and I write
these lines with the full conviction of this truth—l believe
that we have no other country upon whose friendship we
can count so surely in our day of need, and I am certain
that with America our ally we way defy the world."