The Citizen

ENGLISH INFLUENCE IN AMERICA

English interference in the domestic affairs of this country has got to be so great that it has become intolerable. The question we have now to deal with is, how it shall be prevented, for if not prevented at once it will certainly in the long run be the ruin of this republic. From the day that Washington received the sword of the defeated Cornwallis until the present hour, England has never ceased to plan and to plot against this country. Anyone who has read the history of England and of America during the last hundred years will find proof enough of this. America has never been in difficulties without finding out to her cost that in spite of the bond of a common language, England was her deadly foe.

Just as soon as the first Napoleon was made powerless by his disastrous Russian campaign of 1812, England forced a war on America. Just as soon as the slave owners rebellion occurred, England, in spite of being the great anti-slavery champion of the world, showed her undying hatred of America by ranging herself on the side of slavery, and saw no inconsistency at all in being the avowed and outspoken enemy of those who were fighting to free the slaves. She did everything she could do, short of going to war, to hamper and annoy the North. She supplied the rebels with ammunition and with money. She fitted up cruisers to prey on American commerce. She invested largely in Confederate bonds. She built a whole navy of blockade runners. She poured out the vials of her wrath on America through her press. In a word she behaved as ugly and as inimical as she knew how, and her action made the war for the suppression of the slave lords rebellion last five years instead of two. She certainly made it double the task it would have been had she been as strictly neutral as were the other nations of Europe.

No other nation on earth but America would have forgiven England for her action during the late civil war in this country, and it is probable that no other nation in the world would have acted as England did. The English know their influence on this continent, and how they can deceive and bamboozle America as no other nation can. Our fellow-citizens of American birth think they're cute, but with all their cuteness, John Bull can make them do almost what he likes, and what is worse, believe almost what he likes also.

Let us take this free trade business as a sample of England's work and England's influence. She has been inundating this country with her free-trade pamphlets for nearly a score of years. She has her professors of political economy in almost every great seat of learning throughout the land. She has been able, either by cajolery or bribery, to turn some of the most widely read and most influential journals in this country into her partisans and make them outspoken advocates of free trade. She has made a large minority of the American people believe that her special mission is to be the weaver, spinner, smith, general artisan and carrier for all the world, but especially for America. Her teachings have filled the land with aristocrats and dudes, and she will not be satisfied until she has filled it with paupers. It is hardly too much to say that but for her Grover Cleveland would never have been nominated for president, for it can be easily shown that it was free-traders who nominated him, and that free-traders could never have been a power on this continent were it not for England.

Why do not the other European nations bother us with their free trade ideas? France and Germany have very nearly as much trade with us in one way as England has. We do not send them so much grain and meat as we send England, but they send us immense quantities of goods of almost every kind. But those nations never bother us; however they may like to increase their exports to us, they never interfere in our domestic concerns or cause us any annoyance. But with England the case is wholly different: she bothers us by her unceasing interference and contaminates us by her continued scribbling, her press never gives us a moment's peace, and this "constant dropping," not of water, but of ink, has at last begun to "wear a hole" in our nationality, and heaven only knows when the wearing process will cease. We have the English language to thank for most of this English influence. France or Germany might write anything they liked about us, but it would be ten to one if ever any American would see a translation of any article, whether inimical or otherwise, that would appear in the French or German press. It is perfectly safe to conclude that those unpatriotic free trade ideas which are giving us so much trouble just now, owe their existence to English thought, expressed in a language which, unfortunately, has become the national language of America.

If any proof were needed of this, we have only to note what manner of men nominated Grover Cleveland, and what manner of men have kicked against James G. Blaine. The "kickers," that is, men who have recently belonged to the old Republican party, but who are now gone over to the new Democracy, are men who have been notorious for their disgusting Englishness, and their total lack of American patriotism. These men are no more Americans by having been born in America than a man would be a horse by having been born in a stable. They are English in everything, from the cut of their beards to the peculiarity of their accent. All these men support Grover Cleveland, will elect him if they can, and will do their best to bring about either of two things if they elect him, namely: an empire on this continent or annexation to Great Britain.