In a conversation with Mr. Gladstone in 1887, he referred to the enormous power and responsibilities of the United States, and suggested that a desideratum was a new unity between our two countries. We had that of race and language, but we needed a moral unity of English-speaking people for the success of freedom.
The English or Anglo-Saxon race is essentially the same in its more distinguishing characteristics. Unity of language creates unity of thought, of literature, and largely unity of civilization and of institutions. It facilitates social and commercial intercourse, and must produce still more marked political phenomena. We profit naturally by inventions, by discoveries, by constitutional struggles, by civil and religious achievements, by lessons of traditions, by landmarks of usage and prescription. Magna Charta, Petition of Right, Habeas Corpus, what O’Connell even called the “glorious Revolution of 1688,” are as much American as English.
England claims to have originated the representative system six hundred years ago. Our ancestors brought to this soil, “singularly suited for their growth, all that was democratic in the policy of England and all that was Protestant in her religion.” Our revolution, like that of 1688, was in the main a vindication of liberties inherited. In freedom of religion, in local self-government, and somewhat in state autonomy, our forefathers constructed for themselves; but nearly all the personal guarantees, of which we so much boast on our national anniversaries, were borrowed from the mother country.
FOOTNOTE:
[23] By permission of B. F. Johnson and Co., Richmond, Va.
MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON.
1825= ——.
Mrs. Preston is a native of Philadelphia, the daughter of Dr. George Junkin who in 1848 removed to Lexington, Virginia, as president of the Washington College, and remained there till 1861. She was married in 1857 to Prof. J. T. L. Preston of the Virginia Military Institute, her sister Eleanor being the wife of Colonel T. J. Jackson of the same institution.
She identified herself with the South, and her “Beechenbrook: a Rhyme of the War” contains the poems, “Stonewall Jackson’s Grave” and “Slain in Battle.” Her later writings are mostly short poems, many of them religious, articles for magazines, and sketches of travel, all of which breathe forth a sweet and wise influence.