ptiness of this normal
national hatred of John Bull was shown in 1898, when, at the first
distinct sign of friendliness on the part of the British government and
people, the whole American anglophobia vanished, and the people of the
continent realized that the time had come for a recognition of the
essential and normal harmony of the ancient enemies.

In England, the change began somewhat earlier, for within less than a
generation after the Treaty of Ghent the exclusive Tory control
collapsed, and the Revolution of 1832 gave the middle classes a share
of political power. A few years later the Radicals, representing the
working-men, became a distinct force in Parliament, and to middle class
and Radicals there was nothing abhorrent in the American Republic.
Aristocratic society continued, of course, as in the eighteenth
century, to regard the United States with scant respect, and those
members of the upper middle classes who took their social tone from the
aristocracy commonly reflected their prejudices. But the masses of
{249} the British people--whose relatives emigrated steadily to the
western land of promise--felt a genuine sympathy and interest in the
success of the great democratic experiment, a sympathy which was far
deeper and more effective than had been that of the eighteenth-century
Whigs. From the moment that these classes made their weight felt in
government, the time was at hand when the old social antagonism was to
die out, and with it the deep political antipathy which, since the days
of 1793, had tinged the official British opinion of a democratic state.
The last evidence of the Tory point of view came when, in 1861, the
American Civil War brought out the unconcealed aversion of the British
nobility and aristocracy for the northern democracy; but on the
occasion the equally unconcealed sense of political and social sympathy
manifested by the British middle and working classes served to prevent
any danger to the United States, and to keep England from aiding in the
disruption of the Union.

Thus the Treaty of Ghent, marking the removal of immediate causes of
irritation, was the beginning of a period in which the under-lying
elements of antagonism between England and the United States were
definitely to cease. When every discount is made, the celebration,
heartily supported by the national leaders on {250} both sides, of a
century of peace between the British, Canadian, and American peoples,
does exhi