Page:Anglo-American relations during the Spanish-American war (IA abz5883.0001.001.umich.edu).pdf/28

12 During the colonial period and the early part of the nineteenth century, cultured Americans, particularly those of the South, went to England for a portion of their education. The training received during their years abroad, combined with a common racial inheritance and literature, led to a community of thought which served to unite the people of the two countries in a fixed friendship. It is true that it was a one-sided relationship in the beginning, for Great Britain received American ideas with reluctance, but as time passed a common philosophy, ethics, and political theory served not only to reveal mutual interests and sympathies but an actual unity of fundamental principles and ideals. For example: the Puritan Sunday of Cromwell became the Puritan Sunday of Increase and Cotton Mather; the faith of the Wesleys and George Whitefield became the faith of the Methodists in America; the attitude of the Baptists toward the state in England became the attitude of the Baptists toward the state in Rhode Island. British common law became the basis of American common law; Sir William Blackstone became the foremost authority for American jurists: Jeremy Bentham and the English Utilitarians became the exponents of American social legislation; while the great British reform bills of the nineteenth century contained little that had not found previous expression in the United States.

A common legal and constitutional theory has probably been one of the leading factors in promoting Anglo-American friendship. Edmund Burke, in a speech delivered before the House of Commons in 1775, asserted that nearly as many copies of