AMERICA TO-DAY
ning has been made towards that consolidation of the English-speaking countries on which the well-being of the world so largely depends.
Postcript.—The notion of inevitable hostility between a constitutional Monarchy and a Republic has been fostered by American writers in whom one would have expected greater clearness of perception. We find Lowell, for instance, writing in his well-known essay On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners: "I never blamed her (England) for not wishing well to democracy—how should she?" The more obvious question is, How should not one democracy wish another well? There may have been at the time when Lowell wrote, and there may even be to-day, a handful of royalty-worshippers in England who regard a Republic as a vulgar, unpicturesque form of government; but this is not a political opinion, or even prejudice, but mere stolid snobbery. Whatever were England's misdemeanours towards America at the time of the Civil War, they were not prompted by any hatred of democracy.
I find the same misconception insisted on in a document much later than Lowell's essay: a leaflet by the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, contributed to a Good Citizenship Series specially designed for the enlightenment of the more ignorant class of American voters. The tract is called The Ruler of America, and sets forth that the Ruler of America is "the People with a very large P." Now, according
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