GOLDWIN SMITH'S ENTHUSIASM for the United States developed early
and proved enduring. Long before his first visit, as a British radical he
had conjured up a vision of the great English-speaking republic. As an
historian his sympathy and liking for the country were already apparent
in an early lecture on the foundation of the American colonies. That
from the beginning they had been destined for independence was to his
mind obvious, but the manner of their parting, in a violent revolution
which left on each side a legacy of dislike and suspicion, he thought
deplorable. Not the loss of the colonies, but the quarrel, seemed to him
one of the greatest disasters to the English race. He would gladly have
given up such victories as Blenheim and Waterloo, if only the two Eng-
lands might have parted amicably.

He liked to remind Oxford students of the kindly reception given the
first American ambassador to England by George III, who frankly con-
fessed that he had been the last to consent to the separation. Once it
had been made, however, and was irrevocable, he "would be the first
to meet the friendship of the United States as an independent power."
In the speech from the throne the king had declared: "Religion, Lan-
guage, Interest, Affection, may, and I hope will, yet prove a bond of
permanent union between the two countries; to this end neither attention
nor disposition on my part will be wanting." After all, Goldwin Smith
pointed out, when George III signed away his empire over America, he
did not thereby sign away the empire of English law, religion, blood,
language, literature, or liberty. It must be the earnest of every
Englishman that the common and inevitable bonds between the two
countries might be more closely drawn, and that in time the wound
might heal, even though history could never cancel "the fatal page
which robs England of half the glory and half the happiness of being
the mother of a great nation." ¹

Yet his attitude toward the United States was not uncritical. He de-

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