Mark Twain gave a speech on July 4, 1907 in London on “The Day We Celebrate” where he connects five significant agreements in English and American history that advanced a working consensus on the meaning of freedom.
Independence Day 2024: Mark Twain on “The Day We Celebrate”
Excerpts from a speech on “Independence Day” by Mark Twain, full text can be found in Mark Twain’s Speeches at Gutenberg and on the Mark Twain Studies site as “Independence Day.” The American Society in London gave a banquet, July 4, 1907, at the Hotel Cecil. Ambassador Choate called on Mr. Clemens to respond to the toast “The Day We Celebrate.” Twain connects five significant political agreements in English and American history that expanded human freedom
- Magna Carta, June 15, 2015 [Text at Wikisource]
- Charles the First Petition of Right, passed on 7 June 1628 which Twain calls a “Bill of Rights” which was enacted by the English 60 years later in 1689.
- Declaration of Independence, July 4 1776
- The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 by the English Parliament, which Twain refers to as The English Judge, possibly a reference to the outcome of Somerset vs Stewart, decided in 1777 by Lord Mansfield
- Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863
Our Fourth of July which we honor so much, and which we love so much, and which we take so much pride in, is an English institution, not an American one, and it comes of a great ancestry. The first Fourth of July in that noble genealogy dates back seven centuries lacking eight years. That is the day of the Great Charter—the Magna Carta–which was born at Runnymede in the next to the last year of King John, and portions of the liberties secured thus by those hardy Barons from that reluctant King John are a part of our Declaration of Independence, of our Fourth of July, of our American liberties.
The Magna Carta established that the King was not above the law in England and codified many other rights.
And the second of those Fourths of July was not born until four centuries later, in, Charles the First’s time, in the Bill of Rights, and that is ours, that is part of our liberties. The next one was still English, in New England, where they established that principle which remains with us to this day, and will continue to remain with us—no taxation without representation. That is always going to stand, and that the English Colonies in New England gave us.
Twain calls this “The Bill of Rights” but the English king Charles the First called it Petition of Right in 1628. There is a separate “Bill of Rights” passed 60 years later in 1689. “No taxation without representation” was a slogan first in Ireland and then taken up by the American colonists as part of an unsuccessful effort to be treated as English citizens able to elect representatives to Parliament. It’s a shame in some ways that the British did not agree to this and do this for many of their colonies, it would have put the British Empire, or perhaps more properly the Anglosphere, on a very different trajectory.
The Fourth of July, and the one which you are celebrating now, born, in Philadelphia on the 4th of July, 1776—that is English, too. It is not American. Those were English colonists, subjects of King George III., Englishmen at heart, who protested against the oppression of the Home Government. Though they proposed to cure those oppression and remove them, still remaining under the Crown, they were not intending a revolution. The revolution was brought about by circumstances which they could not control. The Declaration of Independence was written by a British subject, every name signed to it was the name of a British subject. There was not the name of a single American attached to the Declaration of Independence—in fact, there was not an American in the country in that day except the Indians out on the plains. They were Englishmen, all Englishmen—Americans did not begin until seven years later, when that Fourth of July had become seven years old, and then, the American Republic was established. Since then, there have been Americans. So you see what we owe to England in the matter of liberties.
The revolutionaries were quite reluctant and made multiple efforts to reach w workable set of accommodations with the English Parliament.
We have, however, one Fourth of July which is absolutely our own, and that is that great proclamation issued forty years ago by that great American to whom Sir Mortimer Durand paid that just and beautiful tribute—Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln’s proclamation, which not only set the black slaves free, but set the white man free also. The owner was set free from the burden and offense, that sad condition of things where he was in so many instances a master and owner of slaves when he did not want to be. That proclamation set them all free. But even in this matter England suggested it, for England had set her slaves free thirty years before, and we followed her example. We always followed her example, whether it was good or bad.
And it was an English judge that issued that other great proclamation, and established that great principle that, when a slave, let him belong to whom he may, and let him come whence he may, sets his foot upon English soil, his fetters by that act fall away and he is a free man before the world. We followed the example of 1833, and we freed our slaves as I have said.
The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 by the English Parliament is the example of 1833. I believe the “English judge” is a reference to Lord Mansfield who ruled in Somerset vs Stewart (1777) that any slave who set foot in England was immediately a free man. The 1833 act was aimed at slavery in most of the colonies and the slave trade.
It is true, then, that all our Fourths of July, and we have five of them, England gave to us, except that one that I have mentioned—the Emancipation Proclamation, and, lest we forget, let us all remember that we owe these things to England. Let us be able to say to Old England, this great-hearted, venerable old mother of the race, you gave us our Fourths of July that we love and that we honor and revere, you gave us the Declaration of Independence, which is the Charter of our rights, you, the venerable Mother of Liberties, the Protector of Anglo-Saxon Freedom—you gave us these things, and we do most honestly thank you for them.
The Emancipation Proclamation only abolished slavery in the states that were in rebellion in the Civil War. Two years later the 13th Amendment banished slavery everywhere in the US.
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Flag Image Credit: Mike Mozart “American Flag” used under Creative Commons with Attribution.