Iowa capitol reporter. [volume] (Iowa City, Iowa) 1841-1855, 1852-10-13

England and America.


Of a new era for England, the open.
ing Of another revelation for America
The old Queen of the Sea and the
young King Of the West have shak-
en- hands.-recognized the family like
ness, Il formed bond of amity. The
mother and child know and own each
other once more.
Ever since the American revolu-
ton, the two countries have been in
rival or hostile conflict. The domin-
ion of the seas and the trade of the
world have been fit subjects to rouse
the jealousy and hate Of the proudest
and most ambitious nations of the
earth. The powerful and triumphant
Britain watched with uneasy eye the
daring and adventurous spirit of the
West, which invaded each long pos
scssed and tavorite market, which
pushed aside the old barriers of com-
merce and opened new channels in
untried regions, which seized every
chance and ran every race of com
petition, with a reckIessness whic !!
few could equa'.
England vented her wrath in sneers,
in odious comparisons, and CON
temptous criticisms. America felt
the insult and returned it with bitter
hate. The war of 1912 so humilating
to British pride, so nattering to our
national vanity, ratherincreased than
diminished the envious strife. And
time as it rolled on, while it added to
the richness and greatness of both,
gave to neither the affection which
should have sprung from a common
lineage, nor the respect which one
great nation should not have hesitat-
ed to pay another.
But the events of the last few wears
have essentially changed both the in
terests and the relations of the two
countries. The younger has acquir-
ed the form and strength and man
ners of approaching manheod-the
elder the dignity, the forbearance,
the appreciation of cultivated matu-
rity. The great industrial exhibition
put the key stone to the friendly arch
which ten years of Transatlantic steam
navigation had done more than any
thing else to found and to cement
With its closing triumph, America
could afford to forgive and England
could afford to forget the past, and
unite in friendly equal treaty for a
common benefit.
Whoever has watched the move
ments in Continental Europe, and
who is there that has not? can hard
ly have failed to see that the great
struggle between depotism and con-
stitutional freedom, already preparing
and soon probably to be determined,
places England, to say tie Z Il - !
a critical, If not a dangerous position.
That Island now atands alone, the
only remaining advocate of national
liberty-the only remaining enemy of
despotism and brute force. II, as some
wise men think not unlikely, Russia
and France and Austria should band
their legions together and hurl their
united might upon her devoted head,
with the fond fanatical hope of ex-
tinguishing the last lamp that glim-
mers in the East for man, in such an
hour it might be the proud privilege
OF the grateful child to lift its arm
for the mothers crown-the blessed
opportunity for both to teach the
world, that English liberty, the same
upon the one side Of the Atlantic as
upon the other, was a principle not
to be destroyed, power never to be
Overthrown.
Such spectacle would be the
nobiest and most impressive that was
ever witnessed in the history of Eu-
rope: two mighty nations, thousands
of miles apart, distinct as the Plan
cts of heaven, yet speaking the same
language, living under the same laws,
reading the the same literature, ami
ted in the bands of common inter-
est and common sympathy, to fight
the battles Of a cause, which, their
principles and not their necessities
made them espouse, a cause which
would draw under its new banner all
who loved Freedom and hated Sla-
who wished the night of