Though not the Cambridge scholar as the Rt. Rev. Jon Holt Titcomb, Mr. Edward Hine was likely the greatest Victorian exponent of British Israelism, popularizing Identity teachings to large audiences and societies both in England and touring extensively in the States. Note: Hine’s Forty-seven Identifications of the British Nation with the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel (1874) is an exhaustive example of the Evidental method later used by Titcomb.
Evidently, among some Identitarians and neo-reactionaries there’s a wish to return America, or the United States, to a political (rather than merely cultural and emotional) Union with Britain. In other words, these critics would abandon, if not disparage, American Patriotism. Countering such criticisms, Hine viewed America’s continued Independence as necessary to the Identity account of Anglo-Saxon history, fulfilling Bible prophecies given to Manasseh. Defending the importance of America’ s Republicanism and her Sovereignty, Hine asserts the gravity of this particular identifier,