Governmental policy, seeking national power, conflicting trade and industrial interests, are the favourite themes of those historians who regard nations as determined in their relations solely by economic causes—­by what is called “enlightened self-interest.”  But governments, no matter how arbitrary, and still more if in a measure resting on representation, react both consciously and unconsciously to a public opinion not obviously based upon either national or commercial rivalry.  Sometimes, indeed, governmental attitude runs absolutely counter to popular attitude in international affairs.  In such a case, the historical estimate, if based solely on evidences of governmental action, is a false one and may do great injustice to the essential friendliness of a people.

How then, did the British people, of all classes, regard America before 1860, and in what manner did that regard affect the British Government?  Here, it is necessary to seek British opinion on, and its reaction to, American institutions, ideals, and practices.  Such public opinion can be found in quantity sufficient to base an estimate only in travellers’ books, in reviews, and in newspapers of the period.  When all these are brought together it is found that while there was an almost universal British criticism of American social customs and habits of life, due to that insularity of mental attitude characteristic of every nation, making it prefer its own customs and criticize those of its neighbours, summed up in the phrase “dislike of foreigners”—­it is found that British opinion was centred upon two main threads; first America as a place for emigration and, second, American political ideals and institutions[10].

British emigration to America, a governmentally favoured colonization process before the American revolution, lost that favour after 1783, though not at first definitely opposed.  But emigration still continued and at no time, save during the war of 1812, was it absolutely stopped.  Its exact amount is unascertainable, for neither Government kept adequate statistics before 1820.  With the end of the Napoleonic wars there came great distress in England from which the man of energy sought escape.  He turned naturally to America, being familiar, by hearsay at least, with stories of the ease of gaining a livelihood there, and influenced by the knowledge that in the United States he would find people of his own blood and speech.  The bulk of this earlier emigration to America resulted from economic causes.  When, in 1825, one energetic Member of Parliament, Wilmot Horton, induced the Government to appoint a committee to investigate the whole subject, the result was a mass of testimony, secured from returned emigrants or from their letters home, in which there constantly appeared one main argument influencing the labourer type of emigrant; he got good wages, and he was supplied, as a farm hand, with good food.  Repeatedly he testifies that he had “three meat meals a day,” whereas in England he had ordinarily received but one such meal a week.