of any other those yourselves acquainted with been studied scientifically, and to have been written upon in a spirit free from the heat of partisanship or from the glaring colors of prejudice. Causes and effects have not yet been apprehended and separated. The winnowing fan of time has not yet sifted the grain from the chaff. No professional chairs can be founded for what really might almost still be called contemporary history. I should not be surprised if, among the students of history, there are many who, for instance, have not even a glimmering of the causes and effects of the French Revolution of 1848, who are not half as well acquainted with the wars which gave Italy freedom and consolidation in the sixties of this century as with such wars as were chronicled by Livy or by Tacitus. The remodelling of the map of Europe during the last forty years probably appears as a subject of study in no syllabus this institute or of institute in the kingdom. I am speaking now to the younger generation. We older folks, perhaps, in the innocence of old age, fancy that events which stirred our deepest feeling or excited our intensest interest must be of necessity, as a matter of course, by intuition or otherwise, we reflect not by what means, equally familiar to our sons and daughters. We who lived through the Indian Mutiny fancy that the Lawrences and the Havelocks must be names more familiar to you than that of the Black Prince or of Marlborough; that the process of the making of the German Empire under William I, must in its broad lines stand out to you in nearer and clearer light than the cloud-wrapped proceedings of our William the Conqueror. But my experience is that it is not so. My first appeal to you, then, tonight shall be in your private studies, in that education of self by which you supplement what you learn from professors, or from such books as are privileged to form part of the regular educational curriculum, by no means to neglect any opportunity of making sume I am speaking to an audience each may have passed, of growths of sentiment, of the creation of interests, of the origin of antipathies, of the grounds of prejudice, if prejudice there be. And this brings me to my second appeal to you, to the one which I specially wish to impress on you to-night. I would urge you not only to bestow some thought on actual great eventswhich I would almost call contemporary events had they not happened before many of my listeners here tonight were born-but to extend your attention to the acquirement of some knowledge, whenever you have the means of attaining it, of the present situation, the present conditions, the temper, the prejudices, the sentiments, the modes of thought, the currents of opinion, of nations other than your own. Ladies and gentlemen, I pre which is fairly cultivated, fairly instructed, fairly conversant with what is going on in the world. Do not. therefore, unless you choose, take what I am about to say to yourselves But you may share my fear that in the country at large there is a most deplorable absence of knowledge as to what our neighbors think and feelan ignorance which, however, I hasten to say is entirely reciprocal. We know the commercial-the statistical side. We know about exports and imports; we know a few of us, perhaps-something of foreign systems of taxation; a few know something of foreign institutions; but as to what stirs the masses, or, indeed, the classes, in this or that quarter of Europe-as to what are the sentiments, the national character of this or that people the most extravagant mistakes are mutually and reciprocally made. International prejudice, I fear, plays almost as prominent and sad a part in these days of enlightenment, of easy access, of railways and steamers, of cosmopol itan and metropole hotels, of international currency conferences, telegraph conferences, sanitary conferences, labor conferences, as in those darker and less talkative times when travels were still adventures, and when the word "international" itself had not yet been coined. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, international prejudice is, I fear, still a force which the resources of civilization have hitherto been powerless to quell. I am think ing, not of hatred, not of fierce passions, not of sudden resentments, not of temporary estrangements, but of the simple inability, of which we have sometimes glaring examples, to understand the conduct and the motives, the sentiments and the opinions of each other. Perhaps it is in itself a prejudice on my part if I modestly suggest that England is not the greatest sinner in the development of international prejudice, though no doubt we are not free from guilt. It is not so easy to know the nature of our own errors about other nations as the er rors of other nations about us; and I naturally find greater facility in illustrating my argument by examples drawn from prejudice against us than by examples the other way. Yet I shall have something to say on both. What stupendous ignorance reigns abroad, I fancy almost in every country, as to the present character of the British nation-about what we care for, strive for, live for; about what stimulates us, angers us, or depresses us. The conception of the British people which still is held abroad by the masses of the people, aye, and by men of light and leading too, is still based to an astonishing extent on the prejudices of a century ago. Of course you all know Napoleon's phrase, that we are a "nation of shopkeepers”—a veiled compliment to the immensity of our commerce, but intended to be a direct attack on our character as that of a nation influenced by nothing but considerations of gain and material prosperity. The idea of our being, not in the sense which might be fairly attributed to any nation, eager for commercial and territorial aggrandizement, but in some special exceptional sense addicted to the most materialistic conception of national life, became so deep rooted that neither time nor a vast change of circumstances has been able to eradicate it. Is it true? Has it ever been true? Have Englishmen as a nation been more actuated by selfish considerations than our neighbors? Is it true now? No; it is absolutely false. On this point our national conscience is not pricked. Has it been true? cannot find that it has ever been proved. For, mind you, it is not sufficient to prove that in various stages of our checkered international history we have been influenced solely by considerations of our own advantage. It would have to be shown that the degree in which Great Britain has exhibited that tendency has been greater than what has prevailed among the other members of the European family. I expect that this prejudice has in large measure arisen from the prosperity which has attended our shop I ers rewards? standing mistakes which have been made, aye, notwithstanding some crimes which in the earlier part of this period have stained our records here and there, the treatment by Great Britain of inferior and subject races has been incomparably superior in respect of liberty and fraternity and equality than what has been accorded in similar circumstances by any people of the universe. keeping-from the degree to which the English have been successful international merchants, international bankers, and manufacturers for foreign countries. The insane attempt of the first Napoleon to exclude British goods from the whole of the continent revealed, through the privations and losses incurred by that continent in consequence of that act, the degree to which British industry-the industry of a so-called nation of shopkeep- One striking incident of our career had swamped the Continental as a nation will occur to most of you world. It is not uncharitable to say at once, unless indeed the achievethat our wealth, increasing decade by ments of Clarkson and Wilberforce decade, has stimulated the notion and the act by which emancipation abroad that, more than other races, was finally accomplished belong to the we were absorbed-unduly, wickedly gap in history which is left too much absorbed in the pursuit of gain at our unexplored. The emancipation of neighbors' expense. Does a paralel slaves in the West Indies, accomfeeling not sometimes come to the sur- panied by a stupendous pecuniary face in the midst of our own people? sacrifice and the ruin of much British Does not the sight of a successful in- property in Jamaica, the whole attidustry, of accumulating wealth, excite tude of the country towards the quesin certain breasts a kind of prejudice tion of slavery, the awakening of the against those whose careers have national conscience in this respect, an reaped rich The foolish awakening which has not, like So prejudice is created that success in many emotions, been followed by a trade must be accompanied by, or careless reaction, should have testiresult from, some abnormal devotion fied to carping Europe that England to selfish considerations, and spring could be moved by a noble, a fraterfrom some blameworthy and ignoble nal, a liberating idea. But it was not appetite for merely material gains. so, and it is not so. What was due to Be that as it may, in the past as in as sympathetic a movement, as divine the present, a peculiar exceptional an inspiration, if I may use the term, selfishness, a hardness of tone, an ig- as ever stirred a people's heart, was noble pursuit of narrow ends, has ascribed by Continental opinion to a been attributed to the English as a mercenary calculating of the respecdistinctly national characteristic. tive losses which would be incurred And yet in the past this country has by other nations as compared with given noble examples of disinterested ourselves, and to the belief that the policy, of sympathy with the causes emancipation of the slave in the West which simple humanity called into Indies would cause so much irretrievbeing, of sacrifices made for prin- able ruin to our competitors in sugar ciple, of national movements on behalf growing that, with some advantages of an idea. If our more sober-minded on our side of which we were well people did not inscribe liberty, frater- aware, the net result would be lucranity, and equality in flaring letters on tive to ourselves. Not humanitarianflags and porticos, the history of our ism but selfish Machiavellian policy, dealings with inferior races during the such was the predominating motive last fifty years will show to the world in the eyes of some of our neighbors that, better than most governing na- of the action which Great Britain tions, we have understood the deeper took. How any students of the movesignificance of those words. Notwith- ment itself, with all the splendid standing occasional lapses, notwith- characters who played a part in that touching drama, could arrive at such conclusions, even under the influence of the most deep-rooted prejudice, passes belief. Yet so it has been from the first, and so it remains to this day. I remember hearing as a boy the charge of selfishness in the emancipation movement brought in refutation of the British claim to have acted simply in the cause of humanity, and to this day the charge is repeated. I am sorry to say that I have heard that the most eminent of German historians, Professor Treitschke (lately deceased), has adopted, and once more expounded to his countrymen, this astonishing theory. It is incredible, because the whole story of the abolition of the slave trade and the emancipation of the slaves in Jamaica is a consistent story of a simply humanitarian movement from the time of Clarkson and Wilberforce down to our own. The suppression of slavery has been a cardinal point of British policy, for which we have risked serious friction with other nations, for which we have sacrificed lives and spent treasures, from the twenty million sterling voted in 1834 down to large items still figuring in our annual estimates. No British ministry could show itself indifferent to the prosecution of the sacred cause, so strong is national sentiment on the subject. Yet when Great Britain proceeds, as she is pledged to proceed, to the abolition of domestic slavery in Zanzibar, in the face of considerable difficulties, and with some serious risks, I shall be surprised if we carry with us the simple acknowledgment of the directness and purity of our motives, so sceptical is international prejudice as to the influences under which we act, so suspicious as to thoughts and plans which it suggests may lurk behind. The distorted interpretation put on our actions as regards slavery is perhaps as good an illustration as can be found of the false estimates placed on our national action. Many others may occur to you. But let me parenthetically point out a misconception of fact by which international prejudice has often sought to strengthen its readings of our suspected action in many parts of the globe. With its imaginative but crooked eye, it fancies wherever there may be something amiss to see the glint of British gold! British gold! Ladies and gentlemen, I know something of that magic force, as for some five years I kept the key of the national coffers in which it is stored. In no country, I believe, would it be so difficult, so impossible to wring out gold for sinister diplomatic purposes as in the United Kingdom. So-called secret service money is an infinitesimal amount in an expenditure so carefully guarded and restricted that the idea that a British government subsidizes foreign movements by the expenditure of money, by the fascination for British gold, is so utterly preposterous that I only mention it because I have often seen the absurd suggestion made by the malevolent tongue of international prejudice. I should not be surprised if during the course of the last ten minutes some wandering minds may have fallen away from a strict attention to the letter of my line of thought, and may have followed out some other case of a prejudiced view of British motives which seemed to them more direct, more apt to the circumstances of to-day. It may have occurred to some of you that the Armenian question could not be absent from my thoughts. If so, you were right. It would be impossible in any address, dealing with the scope and the nature and the dangers of international prejudice, to omit all reference to the baleful part which it has been playing in the tragic drama of the Armenia masI need not dwell long on the misconception and ignorance which have prevailed abroad as to the character of that wave of feeling which has swept over our people. But there was prior misjudgment, due to an invincible, ineradicable misconstruction of our policy as a nation, the belief which nothing could shake that in all our actions there must necessarily be some deep-seated unrevealed policy of a sin sacres. ister selfish character. How often ing point, simply because foreign have foreign statesmen, foreign jour nalists, and others, carried away by this conviction that we must be seeking some secret advantage, attributed to our simple-minded Cabinets clever combinations and Machiavellian designs which, by their very nature, could never enter into the plans of British states. men. How often have they attributed far-reaching schemes, born of ambition and matured with forethought, and the most intricate refinements of calculation, to ministers who were promoting a simple policy from hand to mouth, which would shock the instincts of the astute manipulators of foreign policy abroad? Continental astuteness cannot understand the plainer courses which alone can be followed by Parliamentary governments, even if more complicated designs were congenial to the British character. But never before in an experience which now ranges over a long course of years, during the whole of which I have been an attentive observer of international questions, have I seen the disease of prejudice in so incurable, so aggravated a form as that which has led neighboring great powers to such violent misconceptions of our attitude and our wishes as in this late Armenian crisis. Our attitude has been so simple, so easy of comprehension! What is the cause of such extraordinary and, indeed, such inconceivable misconstruction? It seems that it was absolutely impossible for Continental opinion to believe that humanitarian feelings could count for much in international policy. Therefore other motives must be sought. What motives? Necessarily selfish motives! What could they be? A share in the inheritance of the Turk, opinion, deaf to the clearest evidence, blind to every sign which an impartial eye could take in in a glance, refused to be convinced that Great Britain meant what she said, neither more nor less. There is some hope, as you may have learned, that a juster appreciation of our position and our intentions may soon be felt. Some exceptional circumstances have helped on this occasion to remove at last some most unfounded suspicions, and a late conviction as to our honesty of purpose may by this time have been brought home to foreign opinion. But the task of the removal of the falsities scattered by prejudice has never been heavier. Indeed, at one time, it seemed as if it were a task of despair. It is not uninteresting in this connection to inquire what real effect has been produced abroad by these outbursts of public feeling in this country which have been so remarkable. Their intensity, their ubiquity, and, on the whole, their unanimity could not possibly be disputed by any impartial spectator. But, so far as I have been able to judge, their effect on foreign opinion has not been what might have been expected. They have been powerless to convince foreigners of the integrity of our diplomatic purposes. Our neighbors will not understand them, and they have little belief in them. Some faint echoes of the fierce cries of national indignation which have rung through Great Britain have been heard in Germany; but they were promptly drowned under one influence or another. That the British government must be pulling the strings was a very common idea; if not, that some party purposes must underlie the movement, or else that some morbid hypocrisy was seeking an outlet-an hypocrisy which would be exposed as soon as the moment came when some real national advantage might be snatched. Certainly, in very few quarters was there any admiration shown for, any sympathy displayed with, an enthusiasm which, it would not be unnatural to suppose, might be equally felt by every Christian civilized nation. |