Let us, the descendants of the pioneers of this race, perpetuate and further extend our influence, power, and the political beatitudes which form our system of government, by uniting in a common brotherhood, and attested by a third monumental instrument which will further instinctively mark our progress as a people.
[1] Take the history of the Anglo-American League (ante p. 57) as an illustration of such sporadic influences and their results. That League was formed in London during the Spanish-American War. It was hailed in the United States with expressions of keen delight. But, the war ended, American enthusiasm oozed out; the Boer War began, manifestations were had in the United States against England, the whole efforts of the League were neutralised, if not frustrated, and the wishers for a real union between the countries sadly demoralised. The League is now almost forgotten, and many of its most respectable members are quite willing to conceal the fact that such a society ever existed. Yet the motives of its formation were noble and unselfish; its membership highly respectable and influential; but it confined its acts to mere resolutions; it was inspired by fleeting sentimental conditions.
[2] Still the author of The Americanization of the World, W. T. Stead, boldly advocates such a step.
[3] But the thought is not one which sees the light for the first time in this book. It was the dream of many English and Americans before the Revolution, as Mr. Lecky attests: "The maintenance of one free, industrial, and pacific empire, comprising the whole English race, holding the richest plains of Asia in subjection, blending all that was most venerable in an ancient civilisation with the redundant energies of a youthful society, and destined in a few generations to outstrip every competitor and acquire an indisputable ascendancy on the globe, may have been a dream, but it was at least a noble one, and there were Americans who were prepared to make any personal sacrifices rather than assist in destroying it." Mr. Lecky uses this language in eulogising the course of the Loyalists during the Revolution.—History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. iii., p. 418.
[4] See in this connection Professor Freeman's Greater Greece and Greater Britain, Appendix, p. 105, where reference is made to an attempt more than fifteen years ago to establish a federation between Great Britain and her Colonies under the paradoxical title of "Imperial Federation."
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CHAPTER VII
THE SUBJECTS TO BE COVERED BY A TREATY
I. The Dominion of Canada voluntarily to divide itself into different states, geographically arranged as its citizens desire, in proportion to population, and each state to be admitted as a full member of the American Union.
I approach this subject with the greatest diffidence, for, plainly as I perceive its necessity, I mistrust my ability to make clear to others the motives and causes which induce me to believe that the consolidation of Canada into our Republic is an indispensable condition to the establishment of a complete and permanent brotherhood between the Anglo-Saxon people. Canada a part of the United States by her free and voluntary act, generously and freely seconded by England, and graciously accepted by the United States, the Anglo-Saxon race eo instanti becomes a unit in sympathy, purpose, and progress.