that extorted from kings the charter of its political rights has won,
from the princes and powers of the air, the earth and the water, the
secret of supreme dominion, the illimitable franchise of beneficent
progress.

That it is the stubborn defender of liberty, let our own annals answer,
for America sprang from the defense of English liberty in English
colonies, by men of English blood, who still proudly speak the English
language, cherish English traditions, and share of right, and as their
own, the ancient glory of England.

No English-speaking people could, if it would, escape its distinctive
name, and, since Greece and Judea, no name has the same worth and honor
among men. We Americans may flout England a hundred times. We may oppose
her opinions with reason, we may think her views unsound, her policy
unwise; but from what country would the most American of Americans
prefer to have derived the characteristic impulse of American
development and civilization rather than England? What language would we
rather speak than the tongue of Shakespeare and Hampden, of the Pilgrims
and King James's version? What yachts, as a tribute to ourselves upon
their own element, would we rather outsail than English yachts? In what
national life, modes of thought, standards and estimates of character
and achievement do we find our own so perfectly reflected as in the
English House of Commons, in English counting-rooms and workshops, and
in English homes?

No doubt the original stock has been essentially modified in the younger
branch. The American, as he looks across the sea, to what Hawthorne
happily called "Our old home," and contemplates himself, is disposed to
murmur: "Out of the eater shall come forth meat and out of the strength