Michael Howard gave a speech last week, in which he outlined his beliefs about Britain and the way he thought it ought to be governed.

It wasn?t given a tremendous amount of play in the British press ? they picked up on parts of it that had to do with familiar issues ? a freeze on civil service numbers, lowering taxes, a pledge to increase health spending and support for same-sex civil partnerships.

In her analysis, Janet Daley of the Daily Telegraph characterised what Mr. Howard said as advancing a political desire on the part of the Conservatives to ?say something cheering? For opposition parties, there is a precise moment when they must desist from what strategists call ?painting the sky black? ? trying to induce as much disenchantment and depression about the national condition as possible ? to presenting an uplifting message for the future. We are pretty much smack in the middle of that moment now.?

I thought that was rather less than there was in what Michael Howard said? since I have some experience in writing political speeches, I flatter myself that I can read them with a little insight into how they?re put together.

When I read what Michael Howard said, I had the impression its wording was a compromise between that uplifting message for the future that his party strategists wanted him to deliver, and something Michael Howard himself was burning to say about the dark night in which he thinks the British soul now dozes.

He spoke of cynicism that had been created in the British population: ?Political promises are now treated like a salesman?s patter ? pious words not to be taken at face value,? he said. ?People think public service failures are inevitable ? the consequences of politicians not knowing how to improve things. And they believe failure is like the weather ? something they are powerless to improve, unless they emigrate.?

He spoke of the way all humans dream of success, and asked why British people weren?t able to achieve those dreams more often.

?There is no lack of drive, no want of ambition, no dearth of talent or creativity. What holds too many people back is the one thing that?s supposed to help them grow: the State.? (Capitalising that S in state was a fine touch, producing just the right hint of an all-powerful, Orwellian government.)

But I doubt Conservative Party strategists would be too keen to embrace a view like that one, because the size and scope of the government in Britain is obviously the work of both parties, and living up to Howard?s implied promise of smaller government would be a huge task for the Conservatives in the event they should regain power.

So I think Michael Howard was expressing, in that part of his talk, his personal ideas about improving Britain. Farther on, he fleshed them out a little in this way: ?I passionately believe that we are put on this Earth to make the most of whatever talents and abilities we have ? to fulfil our potential, to make the best of our lives.

?My belief in small government is not some academic exercise. Only when the State is small will people be big.?

In writing her analysis of the Howard speech, Janet Daley had an advantage over most British journalists because she is a transplanted American. In the contrast between the two outlooks on life, she is able to see things about the British that they cannot easily see themselves.

?What the Conservative message is building up to ? in agonisingly slow stages ? is something that takes its inspiration from the American recipe,? she wrote. ?What people want is the freedom to run their own lives, to seek the best for themselves and their children, to be able to take responsibility for their own moral and economic choices? ?As an American, born (like Mr. Howard) of an immigrant family, I believe in the value of this particular dream ? the meritocratic dream of self-fulfilment ? with every fibre of my being. I know that it works in the United States, and that sometimes (as in Mr. Howard?s own case) it works here, too.

?But it is not universally embraced here ? not embedded in the consciousness of every functioning citizen ? as it is in the United States. And that is, when you think of it, for sound historical reasons. Every American either is himself, or is descended from, someone who made a personal decision to risk settling in a new world. In the folk memory of virtually every citizen there is a life, one or two or (less likely) more generations back, that was built on risk, independence, fortitude and sometimes desperation.

?But Britain, and the Old World generally, comes equipped with its own indigenous classes of the passive and resentful. And the corollary of that is that its privileged classes carry a burden of historical guilt that is unknown to Americans. In Britain, we did not all start from the same point only a few generations back.

?It has always seemed significant to me that in the US the term ?middle class? means ?middle income? ? that is, ordinary people ? whereas in Britain, it means ?bourgeois? with all the Marxist connotations.

?To enter the middle class here (even if your parents were poor and you are the first in your family to be educated) is to be instantly culpable for all the inhumane excesses of the Industrial Revolution, and every colonial misadventure. Upon achieving any degree of affluence or even social self-respect, you must immediately heave on to your shoulders the weight of centuries of feudal oppression and misuse of power.

?So, perversely, those who were educated in grammar schools and thereby freed from their own benighted backgrounds, feel obliged to dismantle the educational system which gave them the privileges which now seem illicit. The school that liberated you must be condemned precisely because it has elevated you ? and now, by definition, you are no longer one of the worthy downtrodden but a member of the guilty class.

?This is, of course, utterly illogical. But its pernicious absurdity is at the heart of modern British political life. For a while in the 1980s, Britain got the hang of freedom. The Tories are banking on a revival of that enthusiasm.

?But it is important to remember that Tony Blair?s message was successful partly because it explicitly played on the guilt that the 1980s had bred. New Labour said, we believe in aspiration but only if it is framed in collectivist terms: you are allowed to be ambitious but only if you accept the state?s concept of ?social justice?.

?If the new model Tory optimism is to succeed, it will have to find a way of addressing the endemic, irrational belief into which every educated Briton is initiated: that he, as an individual, is unworthy.?

Bravo, Janet Daley! It occurs to me, what with Michael Howard talking about the British belief that they cannot improve their lot unless they emigrate, and Janet Daley talking about every American?s roots in risk, independence, fortitude and sometimes desperation, that conditions in England are the same now, in a way, as those from which the first American settlers were fleeing in the early 17th Century.

Those were days when the notion of the Divine Right of Kings to rule still held sway. The king ruled by virtue of God?s authority, and therefore should be obeyed in all things. No group, whether they be nobles, or a parliament, or the people in the street, had a right to participate in this rule, and to question or oppose the monarch was to rebel against God?s purpose.

It was the arrogance of those in the United States who served such a king, or who believed in such a king, that led some of the American colonists to rebel, and to fight a war of independence from Britain. And it was fear that people like those they had defeated might return to power that led to the extraordinary care that was taken, in the drafting of the American constitution, always to balance the power of an office with a safeguard against its misuse.

The citizens of the young American nation wanted to ensure that an Orwellian State like the one Michael Howard is talking about never emerged. In order to do that, they made sure that those who ran the state were servants of the people, and could never become their rulers.

John Locke, upon whose views so much of the architecture of the American Government was based, often wrote that governments were properly founded on a desire to preserve the ?life, liberty and property? of its citizens. But when, in writing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wanted to describe the basic rights of an individual in society, he altered Locke?s words to ?life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?.

His reason for doing that has never been clear, but that haunting phrase seems to describe just what it is that gives Americans their incurable sense of optimism about life ? the right of every individual to pursue his own vision of happiness, no matter how eccentric it might be.

It is that sense of freedom and opportunity that Michael Howard wants very much to give Britons, I think. Who wouldn?t wish him success?