More than once I was haunted by the wish to enter and kneel and kiss the cross, by the side of some poor Italian woman and her child. I wish now that I had, but hope it was a genuine Protestant instinct which hindered me. At any rate I shall never have another chance. This crucifix is only brought out once a year—on Good Friday—and I shall never again be in St. John’s Lateran on that day for the “Tenebræ” service.
JOHN TO JONATHAN
An Address delivered in the Music Hall, Boston, on the 11th of October 1870
This Address is printed precisely as it was spoken, at the request of friends who had read extracts in our newspapers. I am quite aware how superficial it must seem to English readers, and would only remind them that I had no Parliamentary debates, or other documents, to which to refer. I am thankful myself to find that, while there are startling gaps in it, there are no gross blunders as to facts or dates. The kindliness with which it was listened to by the audience, and discussed in the American press, allows me to hope that the time has come when any effort to put an end to the unhappy differences between the two countries will be looked upon favourably in the United States. The true men and women on both sides of the Atlantic feel, with Mr. Forster, that a war between America and England would be a civil war, and believe with him that we have seen the last of civil war between English-speaking men. Both nations are, I hope and believe, for a hearty reconciliation, and it only remains for the Governments to do their part.
Thomas Hughes.
It is with a heavy sense of responsibility, my friends, and no little anxiety, that I am here to-night to address you on this subject. I have been in this country now some two months, and from the day I crossed your frontier I have received, from one end of the land to the other, from men and women whom I had never seen in my life, and on whom I had no shadow of a claim that I could discover, nothing but the most generous, graceful, and unobtrusive hospitality. I am not referring to this city and its neighbourhood, in which all Englishmen are supposed to feel very like home, and in which most of us have some old and dear friend or two. I speak of your States from New York to Iowa and Missouri, from the Canadian border to Washington. Everywhere I have been carried about to places of interest in the neighbourhood, lodged, boarded, and cared for as if I had been a dear relative returning from long absence. However demoralised an Englishman may become in his own country, there is always one plank in his social morals which he clings to with the utmost tenacity, and that is paying his own postage stamps. My hold even on this last straw is sadly relaxed. I am obliged to keep vigilant watch on my letters to hinder their being stamped and posted for me by invisible hands. I never before have so fully realised the truth of those remarks of your learned and pious fellow-citizen, Rev. Homer Wilbur, whose lucubrations have been a source of much delight to me for many years, when he says somewhere, “I think I could go near to be a perfect Christian if I were always a visitor at the house of some hospitable friend. I can show a great deal of self-denial where the best of everything is urged upon me with friendly importunity. It is not so very hard to turn the other cheek for a kiss.” I should be simply a brute if I were not equally touched and abashed by the kindness I have received while amongst you. I can never hope to repay it, but the memory of it will always be amongst my most precious possessions, and I can, at least, publicly acknowledge it, as I do here this evening.
But, my friends, I must turn to the other side of the picture. There is nothing—at any rate, no kind of pleasure, I suppose—which is unmixed. From the deepest and purest fountains some bitter thing is sure to rise, and I have not been able, even in the New World, to escape the common lot of mankind in the Old. Everywhere I have found, when I have sounded the reason for all this kindness, that it was offered to me personally, because, to use the words of some whom I hope I may now look on as dear friends, “We feel that you are one of us.” The moment the name of my country was mentioned a shade came over the kindest faces. I cannot conceal from myself that the feeling towards England in this country is one which must be deeply painful to every Englishman.
It was for this reason that I chose the subject of this lecture. I cannot bear to remain amongst you under any false pretences, or to leave you with any false impressions. I am not “one of you,” in the sense of preferring your institutions to those of my own country. I am before all things an Englishman—a John Bull, if you will—loving old England and feeling proud of her. I am jealous of her fair fame, and pained more than I can say to find what I honestly believe to be a very serious misunderstanding here, as to the events which more than anything else have caused this alienation. You, who have proved your readiness as a people to pour out ease, wealth, life itself, as water, that no shame or harm should come to your country’s flag or name, should be the last to wish the citizen of any other country to be false to his own. My respect and love for your nation and your institutions should be worth nothing to you, if I were not true to those of my own country, and did not love them better. For this reason, then, and in the hope of proving to you that you have misjudged the England of to-day—that she is no longer, at any rate, if she ever was, the haughty, imperious power her enemies have loved to paint her, interfering in every quarrel, subsidising and hectoring over friends, and holding down foes with a brutal and heavy hand, careless of all law except that of her own making, and bent above all things on heaping up wealth—I have consented to appear here tonight. I had hoped to be allowed to be amongst you simply as a listener and a learner. Since my destiny and your kindness have ordered it otherwise, I can only speak to you of that which is uppermost in my thoughts, of which my heart is full. If I say things which are hard for you to hear, I am sure you will pardon me as you would a spoilt child. You are responsible for having taught me to open my heart and to speak my mind to you, and will take it in good part if you do not find that heart and mind just what you had assumed them to be.