Greater Greece and Greater Britain; and, George Washington, the Expander of England.: Two Lectures with an AppendixFreeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
History
Greater Greece and Greater Britain; and, George Washington, the Expander of England.: Two Lectures with an Appendix
Freeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
Great Britain -- Colonies; Imperial federation; Washington, George, 1732-1799
man, is the same in all times and places, and that there is no time
or place whose experience may not supply us with some teaching. But
free states naturally supply the best lessons for free states. The
difference in scale between the free states of various ages is after
all only an accidental difference which does not go to the root of the
matter. The difference is largely part of that extension of the area of
history which follows on the advance of civilized man, that advance in
which the creation of Greater Greece in one age and of Greater Britain
in another were alike steps. The great thing to remember in these
matters is that the men of the earliest days of civilized Europe, the
elder brethren of the great historic family of which we ourselves are
members, were neither, as men seemed to think a few generations back,
beings of a race above us, nor yet, as some seem inclined to think
now, beings so far below us, or in a position so unlike our own, that
their experience can be of no use to us. Either of these mistakes is
alike fatal to a general grasp of that unbroken history of the world
of which the earliest days of Greece are one stage and the most modern
days of England are another. Above all, instead of despising those days
of small communities because of their ignorance of modern inventions
which they needed far less than we do, let us rather rejoice that those
inventions have brought us who do need them nearer to the political
level of those early times. To me at least it is some satisfaction
that the England in which I now live is palpably more like the Athens
of the days of Periklês than was the England in which I was born. And
it is beyond doubt the great scientific discoveries of modern times
which have largely helped to make it so.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] While I am revising my proofs, I read, in a law report in an
English newspaper, something about “an American subject.”
GEORGE WASHINGTON,
THE EXPANDER OF ENGLAND.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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