It may be well to explain here (for it is a subject on which the Englishman who has lived in America is often consulted) that the Republican party may roughly be said to be the equivalent of the Conservative party in England, while the Democrats are the Liberals. It happens that a precisely reverse notion has (or had until very recent years) some vogue in England, the misconception being an inheritance from the times of the American Civil War.
British sympathy was not nearly so exclusively with the South at the time of the war as is generally supposed in the United States; none the less, the ruling and aristocratic classes in England did largely wish to see the success of the Southern armies. The Southerner, it was understood, was a gentleman, a man of mettle and spirit, and in many cases the direct descendant of an old English Cavalier family; while the Northerners were for the most part but humdrum and commercially minded people who inherited the necessarily somewhat bigoted, if excellent, characteristics of their Dutch, Puritan, or Quaker ancestors. The view had at least sufficient historical basis to serve as an excuse if not as a justification. So it came about that those classes which came to form the backbone of the Conservative party were largely sympathisers with the South; and, after the war, that sympathy naturally descended to the Democratic party rather than to the Northern Republicans. Except, however, in one particular the fundamental sentiments which make a man a Republican or a Democrat to-day have nothing to do with the issues of war times.
I do not know that any one has successfully defined the fundamental difference either between a Conservative and a Liberal, or between a Republican and a Democrat, nor have I any desire to attempt it; and where both parties in each country are in a constant state of flux and give-and-take, such a definition would perhaps be impossible. It may be that Ruskin came as near to it as is practicable when he spoke of himself as "a Tory of the old school,—the school of Homer and Sir Walter Scott."
Many people in either country accept their political opinions ready made from their fathers, their early teachers, or their chance friends, and remain all their lives believing themselves to belong to—and voting for—a party with which they have essentially nothing in sympathy. If one were to say that a Conservative was a supporter of the Throne and the Established Church, a Jingo in foreign politics, an Imperialist in colonial matters, an advocate of a strong navy and a disbeliever in free trade, tens of thousands of Conservatives might object to having assigned to them one or all of these sentiments, and tens of thousands of Liberals might insist on laying claim to any of them. Precisely so is it in America. None the less the Republican party in the mass is the party which believes in a strong Federal government, as opposed to the independence of the several States; it is a party which believes in the principle of a protective tariff; it conducted the Cuban War and is a party of Imperial expansion; it is the party which has in general the confidence of the business interests of the country and fought for and secured the maintenance of the gold standard of currency. It is obvious that, however blurred the party lines may be in individual cases, the man who in England is by instinct and conviction a Conservative, must in America by the same impulse be a Republican.
In both countries there is, moreover, a large element which furnishes the chief support to the miscellaneous third parties which succeed each other in public attention and whenever the lines are sharply drawn between the two great parties, the bulk of these can be trusted to go to the Liberal side in England and to the Democratic side in America. Nor is it by accident that the Irish in America are mostly Democrats.
I am acutely aware of the inadequacy of such an analysis as the foregoing and that many readers will have cause to be dissatisfied with what I say; but I have known many Englishmen of Conservative leanings who have come to the United States understanding that they would find themselves in sympathy with the Democrats and have been bewildered at being compelled to call themselves Republicans. Whatever the individual policy of one or the other party may be at a given moment, ultimately and fundamentally the English Conservative, especially the English Tory, is a Republican, and the Liberal, especially the Radical, is a Democrat. Both Homer and Sir Walter Scott to-day would (if they found themselves in America) be Republicans.
FOOTNOTES:
[227:1] For myself, I confess that my interest began somewhat prematurely. I had been in the country but a few months and had taken no steps towards naturalisation when I voted at an election in a small town in a Northwestern Territory where I had been living only for a week or two. My vote was quite illegal; but my friends (and every one in a small frontier town is one's friend) were all going to vote and told me to come along and vote too. The election, which was of the most friendly character, like the election of a club committee, proved to be closely contested, one man getting in (as City Attorney or Town Clerk or something) only by a single vote—my vote. Since then, the Territory has become a populous State, the frontier town has some hundred thousand inhabitants, and the gentleman whom I elected has been for some years a respected member of the United States Senate. I have never seen any cause to regret that illegal vote.