The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1911-12-27

Every now and then some one in 4
the Dominion INDUCES in an outburst
Of Indignation because the people OF
the United States call themselves
Americans. Surely no Canadian wants
to call himself an American. He has
an older and a better name-a name
that no one else can claim. More
over, if some 9OOOO,O00 of people de
eide to call themselves something, it
is not easy to see what any one else
is going to do about it, A recent ref
erence to this matter in a contempor
airy led us to look into it historically,
and we learn that the people Of what
is now the United States did not call .
themselves Americans, but the name .
was given them by the public men of .
the United Kingdom. The custom .
there was to refer to the Colonies of |
this continent as America and the
people as Americans. We find the I
elder Pitt, afterward Earl Chatham, /
using both these expressions in Par !
! lament as long ago as 1866. In one |
of his most famous speeches-that |
against the employment of mercen- |
aries in the war with the colonies,
delivered some years after that date,
he said MY Lords, you cannot con
quer America. Were | an American
as | am an Englishman, and foreign
force were landed on my shores
never could lay down my arms
In the bill which he submitted to
the Lords in the hope that it would
pass and remove discomfort, he uses
the word America as descriptive Of
the colonies, and expressly excerpts
from it Acadia, the island of St.
Johns and Canada.
As long ago as 1744, in a bill deal
ing with trade matters, "the American
colonies" were referred to, and in
1853 the secretary of the treasury
spoke of the revenue from America
} In 1878 Pitt said:
when the resolution was taken in
the House to tax America, l was in
bed" and he closed his speech by
saying: The Americans are the sons
Of England" During the debate on
; the Quebec act in 1775 the thirteen
colonies were referred to as America
in contra-distinctiOn to Canada
In an anonymous pamphlet printed
in London in 1865 on THE State of
d the Nation" the colonies are called
America and the people Americans.
Burke, in his famous Cancellation
speech in l775, spoke Of the colonials
as Americans. Doubtless we might
multiply instances if time would per
nit the necessary investigation or it
were necessary to demonstrate the
point.
On the other hand, the people Of
the colonies did not, officially at least,
speak of themselves as Americans,
In a somewhat hasty examination Vi
, number of official protests against
. taxation we have been unable to find
the term applied by these people 20
themselves, although in its famous
protest the Continental Congress
, spoke of American commerce" and
the General Assembly of Massachu-
sets said that certain questions
ought to be determined by IAN Ameri-
% can Parliament" 1t is not until after
the independence of the colonies was
: acknowledged that we find the use OF
the term American becoming common
70 on this side of the Atlantic. Then we
|. read of Washington saying, The
0 name America is a stimulus to lib
e erty," and Thomas Paine, an English
j. man by birth and education, writing
i'm Philadelphia that the Americans
have always stood for liberty"
Speaking for moment of the name
S Canadian, we may say that in our
j. necessarily hurried search we find it
D used just about the middle of the
T. seventeenth century, or a hundred
4 years before we find the word Amer
e lean used as descriptive of people
$ 1t is true that those to whom it was
applied were of French origin, and il