In my belief and according to my experience, if anything is to be accomplished it must be by the initiative of one man. A society with the full machinery of president, vice-president, and committee may be created, but then, when all is told, the work will be the work of one man, who must think for the society, live for it, act for it, and give all his time to it. The man who does the work need not be the man who started it.
One of the last associations with the start of which I was associated—though one of which I beg to state I was never the mainspring or the thinking machine—was the Atlantic Union.
The origin and the meaning of the Society was as follows:—
I observed when I last visited the United States in 1893, a blind and stupid hostility to England, partly made up of prejudice and ignorance, and partly due to the press of New York, which caters in great measure for the Irish, and is copied by the country papers without asking what motives have actuated the misrepresentation of things English. In illustration of this hostility I observed that the attitude of almost everybody in America towards England was then one of suspicion; whatever was done by this country was regarded and treated at the outset as presumably done with an evil motive or with unworthy considerations. I observed further, that the individual Englishman was received with friendliness and kindness; that he can reckon on friendliness. Also that there exists, all over the States, a great deal of interest in everything that concerns the old country; in news and telegrams from England, in our literature, in our views of things. I saw also that the ignorance of our institutions in the States is simply amazing. We talk about the laws being the same; the foundation of the law is the same, but there are enormous differences. For instance, no Americans seem able to understand loyalty; our personal respect and affection for the sovereign is to them incomprehensible; they do not understand the restrictions of sovereignty, and expect from the sovereign the same personal and irresponsible acts and words as from an ordinary person. Again, as to the House of Lords, their ignorance and prejudice are colossal. Mostly they think that it comprises all the sons as well as the holders of the title; and they are fully convinced that a noble lord is and must be a profligate and roué. If you ask them why, they point probably to some noble lord who has been figuring in the States with a variety actress, leaving his wife at home; or to some scandal in which someother noble lord or some younger son with a courtesy title is concerned. That the House of Lords consists almost entirely of elderly and quite respectable gentlemen, many of whom have received or succeeded to their titles late in life; who are not too rich; who are for the most part interested in local, rather than in national matters; who are chairmen of county institutions and supporters of the agricultural interest; who leave their legislative functions to the care of a dozen or twenty statesmen and as many lawyers—that such is our House of Lords is a thing that they cannot believe, and will not believe, because it conflicts with one of their most cherished prejudices. Indeed this prejudice I have found among Americans who have been here over and over again. Now, one is not called upon to defend either the limited monarchy or the Upper House to Americans; but it would certainly be well if they could learn at least the facts of the case. As it is, they are unable to understand the existence of free institutions, and personal liberty of thought, speech, and action, together with (1) a sovereign whose power—but this, again, they cannot understand—is far less than that of their President; and (2) a House of Lords not elected by the people, whose modest functions are to put on the drag, to prevent the passing of ill-considered measures, and to allow no great or important step to be taken until they are well assured that it is the will of the people.
Again, consider the attitude of the average American towards the Anglican Church. I suppose that the Episcopal Church in the States does regard the Anglican branch with respect or with appreciation. But the average American does not belong to the Episcopal Church. I have found in the average American a rooted belief (1) that our clergy are enormously rich; (2) that they do nothing; (3) that such a thing as piety is not known to them; (4) that the patronage of the Church is in the hands of “the aristocracy,” who put their younger sons into all the enviable berths. These prejudices are kept alive by an ill-informed or malignant press in America; by certain dissenting ministers in this country whose hatred of the Church has a social origin—let us own that of late the appearance of scholars and divines among the Nonconformist ministers is changing the social aspect of the case; and by the traditions of persecution which still linger in the memory of the New England folk. The prejudices can be answered only by reference to figures and to facts which cannot be disputed. The poverty of the English clergy is far greater than the poverty of the American ministers; the number of good livings in England is much less than the number of well-paid churches in New England. The Anglican bishops, whose incomes appear large, cannot, as a rule, save much from what they receive. They are, for the most part, elderly when they are appointed; they have to keep up open house all the year round; they have to support every kind of charitable and religious enterprise; they are always contributing to the support of poor clergy, of clergymen’s widows and orphans, and schools and so on; they travel about, and are always obliged to keep up a staff of chaplains and secretaries. The bishop is paid for the maintenance and leadership of the diocese and all that his diocese means; he is the figure-head, the chairman, the advocate; without a bishop the diocese falls to pieces. As regards piety, what need be said when we can point to the long and glorious history of the English Church—to the names of Ken, Hooker, Herbert, Heber, or, in later times, Keble, Pusey, Maurice, Robertson, Stanley and hundreds of others less known to fame? As to the patronage of the Church, one has only to look into the Clergy List to find out what that is worth and how it is bestowed.
An American once wrote to me giving me, with a great air of triumph, what he was pleased to consider a damning fact for the Church—viz., that the patron of a certain benefice had actually bestowed it upon his illegitimate son first and then upon that holder’s son. He did not explain why illegitimacy should make a man unfit for Holy Orders or for holding a living; nor did he explain how it was that the bishop had accepted for the benefice a man unfit, as my American evidently considered the man to be. But then he was quite ignorant that the bishop had anything to do with the appointment.
These prejudices are not, of course, so strong with the educated and the cultured Americans as with the average American; still, they do exist, more or less, with nearly all. They are difficult to be cleared away because they assist the American in that feeling of superiority which is dear to every nationality. It is perhaps dearer to an American than to a Frenchman or a German; and I think that one of the causes of the American hostility to England that I noticed during my stay in the United States in 1893 is that we do not recognise that superiority. We do not, in fact, care in the least whether a foreign country thinks itself superior to ourselves or not. But we do see that the American claim is partly based on ignorance and prejudice. And we should be very pleased if we could, by any means in our power, remove some of that prejudice.
I next observed that a great number of Americans—and, for that matter, of people from our own large colonies—come to this country every year; that they stay a short time in London; that they travel about England to a certain extent, seeing cathedrals, castles, churches, and historic places; that they bring with them no letters of introduction; that they never enter an English house or make a friend of any English man or woman; that they see everything from the outside only; and that they go away again with all their prejudice and ignorance as strong as ever. For you see, you cannot master the history, or understand the present condition, of the Church of England by standing in a village churchyard or by looking through a cathedral.
This is a long preamble. It leads up to the creation of the Atlantic Union.
The Society admits as members Englishmen, Irishmen and Scotchmen, Australians, Canadians, citizens of any British colony, and Americans. Because the Canadians and the citizens of the United States represent the largest field, it is called the Atlantic Union. We want to see branches in all the great cities, which shall offer some kind of hospitality to members of other branches. For instance, we in London engage ourselves to receive Americans and others, to show them collective and individual attention; we organise for them personally conducted walks and visits; we shall be able to let them see more than is shown to the average stranger; we shall hold receptions; we shall get up dinners, concerts, lectures; certain ladles will give garden-parties and “at-homes”; we shall make up parties to go to Oxford and Cambridge and to certain cathedrals and other places; and during the whole time we shall endeavour to present our own institutions as they are—without comparisons: as they are.
Again, we shall not attempt to get hold of millionaires, nor can we offer our friends an opening into “London Society.” We want to attract the classes which have most influence in the colonies and in the States—the professional classes, lawyers, physicians, authors, teachers. And on our side we shall offer the society of the corresponding classes—of cultivated and educated people, men and women of science, followers of art, literature, journalism, and the learned professions generally. It is a great scheme; it is now (1901) only in its second year; but I think—I hope—that it has a future before it.