A CONSIDERATION OF THE FEDERATION OF THE SEVEN ENGLISH-SPEAKING NATIONS
BY
SINCLAIR KENNEDY
WITH A MAP
SECOND IMPRESSION
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK
LONDON, BOMBAY. CALCUTTA AND MADRAS
1915
All Rights Reserved
{iv}
{v}
TO
THE PAN-ANGLES
{vi}
PREFATORY NOTE
THE Author is indebted to the following publishers and authors for kind permission to make quotations from copyright matter: to Mr. Edward Arnold for Colonial Nationalism, by Richard Jebb; to Mr. B. H. Blackwell for Imperial Architects, by A. L. Burt; to the Delegates of the Clarendon Press for Federations and Unions, by H. E. Egerton; to Messrs. Constable & Co. for Alexander Hamilton, by F. S. Oliver, and The Nation and the Empire, edited by Lord Milner; to the publishers of the Encyclopedia Britannica; to Messrs. Macmillan & Co. for Seeley's Expansion of England, and G. L. Parkin's Imperial Federation; to Admiral Mahan; to Mr. John Murray for English Colonization and Empire, by A. Caldecott; to Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons Ltd. for The Union of South Africa, by W. B. Worsfold; to the Executors of the late W. T. Stead for the Last Will and Testament of C. J. Rhodes; to Messrs. H. Stevens, Son, & Stiles for Thomas Pownall, by C. A. W. Pownall; to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin Company for Thayer's John Marshall and Woodrow Wilson's Mere Literature; to Messrs. D. C. Heath & Co. for Woodrow Wilson's The State; to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons for The Works of Benjamin Franklin, edited by John Bigelow; to the Yale University Press for Popular Government, by W. H. Taft; and also to The Times; The Round Table; The Outlook; and The Springfield Weekly Republican.
{vii}
FOREWORD
THE English-speaking, self-governing white people of the world in 1914 number upwards of one hundred and forty-one millions. Since December 24, 1814, there has been unbroken peace between the two independent groups of this race—a fact that contravenes the usual historical experiences of peoples between whom there has been uninterrupted communication during so long an epoch. The last few decades have seen increasingly close understandings between both the governments and the peoples of this civilization.
In 1900 the British navy controlled the seas—all seas. From 1910 to 1914 the British navy has controlled the North Sea only.[vii-1] Some doubt whether this control can long be maintained. If it is lost, the British Empire is finished.[vii-2] The adhesion of the dependencies to their various governments and also the voluntary cohesion of the self-governing units would be at an end. "The disorders which followed the fall of Rome would be insignificant compared with those which would {viii} ensue were the British Empire to break in pieces."[viii-1] Such a splitting up would place each English-speaking nation in an exposed position, and would strengthen its rivals, Germany, Japan, Russia, and China. It would compel America to protect with arms, or to abandon to its enemies, not only the countries to which the Monroe Doctrine has been considered as applicable, but those lands still more important to the future of our race, New Zealand and Australia. If this catastrophe is to be averted, the English-speaking peoples must regain control of the seas.
These pages are concerned with the English-speaking people of 1914. Here will be found no jingoism, if this be defined as a desire to flaunt power for its own sake; no altruism, if this means placing the welfare of others before one's own; and no sentiment except that which leads to self-preservation. No technical discussion of military or naval power is here attempted. The purpose of these pages is to indicate some of the common heritages of these English-speaking peoples, their need of land and their desire for the sole privilege of taxing themselves for their own purposes and in their own way.
Federation is here recognized as the method by which English-speaking people ensure the freedom of the individual. It utilizes ideals and methods common to them all. Where it has been applied, it fulfils its dual purpose of protecting the group and leaving the individual unhampered.
This consideration may appear to the political {ix} economist to be merely a few comments on one instance of the relationship of the food supply to the excess of births over deaths; to the international politician, as notes on the struggles of the English-speaking race; and to the business man, as hints on present and future markets and the maintenance of routes thereto. Books could be written on each of these and kindred topics. This is not any one of such treatises, but a statement of only a few aspects of a huge question.
To Benjamin Franklin may be given the credit of initiating the thesis of these pages, for he foresaw in 1754 the need of a single government based on the representation of both the American and British groups of self-governing English-speaking people. Possibly there were others before him. Certainly there have been many since. Some have been obscured by time. Others, like Cecil John Rhodes, stand out brilliantly. These men visioned the whole race without losing sight of their own local fragment. They saw the need of blocking intra-race frictions in order to maintain our inter-race supremacy. They spoke the English language, and held by the ideals of English-speaking men—proud of their race.
To such as these, wherever they are found, owing affection to the British and American flags which they protect, and which protect them from others, this discussion is addressed. It is a family appeal in terms familiar to the family here called—the Pan-Angles.
SINCLAIR KENNEDY.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.
January 17, 1914.
[vii-1] Cf. Round Table, London, May 1911, p. 247.
[vii-2] Round Table, London, November 1910, p. 27: "Directly the British Empire is doubtful of its supremacy by sea its full liberty will disappear, even if there has been no war."
[viii-1] United Empire, London, January 1914, J. G. Lockhart, "The Meaning of British Imperialism," p. 53.
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{xi}
CONTENTS
FOREWORD vii
I. THE CIVILIZATION 1
II. THE PEOPLE 21
III. INDIVIDUALISM 47
IV. THE SEVEN NATIONS 79
V. GOVERNMENTAL PRACTICES 94
VI. DANGERS 120
VII. TENDENCIES 160
VIII. A COMMON GOVERNMENT 184
IX. WORKING FOR FEDERATION 206
X. CONCLUSION 227
INDEX 237
MAP At the end of the volume
{x}
{1}
THE PAN-ANGLES
I
THE CIVILIZATION
A GREAT civilization has spread over the earth. Many millions of people believe it the best that has yet appeared. In it the faiths and strivings of a strong race are expressed. History teaches that it will be assailed by rival civilizations. Must it fall and its people be led into the bondage of alien ways?
The date at which a civilization begins must always be unknown, so slowly and steadily do the contributing forces operate. The birth of even so definite an organization as a nation is a matter of opinion. The United States of America, for example, may be regarded as having come into being on July 4, 1776, or at the adoption of the Constitution in 1789, or at the end of the French War in 1763, or on anyone of various other dates, according to the historical bias of the chronicler. But before records now legible to us were made, the Pan-Angles were long past their beginning stages.
Thousands of years ago Europe emerged from the {2} glacial ice. Off its western coast lay islands. The largest was close to the continent, and whatever peoples made their way into Europe had no great difficulty in crossing the narrow water. Migration must have followed migration, as continental tribes, more progressive than the islanders, came with superior weapons and skill to conquer and colonize. Bronze drove out flint and iron overcame bronze. Settlements of invaders assimilated with the subject natives and themselves became natives to the next foreign exploiter. The resulting people became known to the Romans as Britons. Rome's traders saw that the land was worth possessing.
In the middle of the first century A.D., Imperial Rome was in a mood for further expansion. It became necessary to intervene in the affairs of the northern island, touched already by Roman influence, but as yet independent of that power. In the island there were many princes and many governments adequate to the local demands, but no organization for concerted action against a powerful intruder. Within fifty years the task of pacification was largely accomplished. The southern two-thirds of the land then enjoyed the beneficent rule of Roman administrators. They governed Britain for its own good—as they saw it. They made it as much as possible like Rome. Baths and temples, roads and bridges, and a firm law brought Roman enlightenment to uncultured Britain. The Latin tongue was the official language. Many Romans of the military and civil services married native women. For more than two centuries Britain was thus a dependency of Rome, and many Britons were proud to belong to the {3} great empire. The rest of the island, to which this boon was never extended, was inhabited by barbarous hill tribes, who, even when Rome was strong, could protect themselves, and who at favourable opportunities made raids against the loyal Britons. The Romans had come to Britain to rule it, but had remained Romans, had taken their orders from colonial secretaries in Rome, had left their Roman wives and children at home—presumably because of the severity of Britain's climate,—and after an honourable term of service had retired on half-pay, or something as good. Just how Rome profited by holding Britain is immaterial now, whether by tribute levied and collected directly, whether through extended opportunities for trade, or whether in the employment ("outdoor relief," a Canadian might put it [3-11]) of a large military and civil force, paid, if Britain were self-supporting, by Britain's taxes. Perhaps the knowledge of having discharged a duty, shirking not the burden of the strong, was the reward Rome really prized.
A change of rulers was, however, in store for them all—Briton and Roman alike. By 350 A.D. a huge amorphous rival had begun to overflow its Northern forest, a race of strong, eager men seeking more land. That their first attacks were toward Rome itself showed the empire's weakness. Rome's intentions toward outlying dependencies may have been of the best, but it was powerless to fulfil them. The navy, such as it was, was forced to concentrate in home waters; and the army, called to protect the heart of the empire, left empty the barracks of Britain.
{4}
Then, on the disorganized Britain, borne by the north-east wind, fell the invaders. With them came many of our most cherished virtues and a new epoch of governmental theory. The Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Danes, and Norsemen came, not to superimpose themselves as rulers, but to colonize. They brought their families along. The climate suited them nicely. They wanted to live there and make the country their country. The fact that it was already inhabited formed only a temporary obstacle. As has happened repeatedly in history, those who came were strong; those they found were weak. The right of prior occupation was matched against the right to take by force. In time the natives had disappeared and the newcomers were settling and improving the land. There was no looking back to a mother country for orders or protection. Their fathers across the North Sea had evolved certain governmental ideas. These the migrating generations had carried with them and planted in the new soil. They proved adequate; and if any tie bound the lusty offspring to the ancestral home it could have been sentiment only—unencouraged by written and electric communication. The sentiment was short-lived.
Of these separate colonies there were as many as there were tribes, and as many tribes as there were shiploads. They all came from the great Teutonic stock that covered so much of north-western Europe. Five hundred years they spent trying conclusions among themselves, deciding what should be the language, the law, the name, they were to hand down to us. The people long remained without any name common to all; but in time {5} their country became known as England. Here were established the characteristics that have marked us ever since. The framework of the language was set; the greed for land was indulged; and the instinct for self-government, unable to evolve for its own security any system of central control, proved finally the undoing of all the jealous little autonomies. When a single-minded force threatened their cherished liberties, they were capable of no single-minded resistance. A neighbour across the channel thought he could make good use of England, proved his point one day when the wind blew favourably towards Hastings, and became England's master.
Then began a new governmental era, one having no parallel in our history since. The Saxon had been in most recent supremacy. Wealth and power passed from Saxon to Norman hands. Had the Duchy of Normandy been large enough to form the centre of its ruler's activities, England, like the Britain of the past, would have become a dependency of a foreign power. Two factors prevented: England, because of its size and of its separation from the continent was the more valued possession of the two; and William and his followers, although considering themselves greatly superior in culture and breeding, were really of the same race as the men they conquered, and hence easily assimilated with them. Had this been an invasion of people, that is, of men with their wives and children—it must have meant extermination of the Angles, Saxons, and Danes, either in war or in economic strife. But no such colonizing force was at work. The lords of England were reduced {6} to peasantry, and the peasants of whatever origin kept on about their affairs. In time the new nobility was no longer foreign. Neither a dependency, nor a colony, England gradually absorbed the Normans and all the importance of Normandy.
From this assimilation England rose independent and a unit. The Normans, it has been said, crushed the Angles, Danes, and Saxons into one people.[6-1] Just as inexorably were the Normans themselves fused into the common mass—
"Thus from a mixture of all kinds began, That heterogeneous thing, an Englishman: . . . The silent nations undistinguish'd fall, An Englishman's the common name for all. Fate jumbled them together, God knows how; Whate'er they were, they're true-born English now."[6-2]
Out of the vigour and strength that resulted have risen the Pan-Angles; and no foreign power since then has conquered or ruled them in England or elsewhere. With several governmental units co-ordinated to no central authority, England had been devastated and had been unable to repel invasions. These local powers were now combined under a strong unitary government. So efficient did it prove for many generations, that Pan-Angles as a whole are only now realising its limitations. For five centuries no change in circumstances warranted the consideration of any other.
Suddenly, in a few years, everything changed except the minds of men. The world began to {7} grow, and Europe was staggered by the knowledge of areas immeasurable as compared to the lands previously known. England then began to take its place as a great nation. In 1497 a ship, financed by Bristol merchants, discovered Newfoundland,[7-1] and the sea-divided control of the Pan-Angles was foreshadowed. From this date, perhaps, Pan-Angle history may most conveniently be reckoned. If so, four hundred and seventeen years lie behind us. Of these the first hundred are negligible. That was an age of fable, when the children of Europe went out on lonely quests and staked their lives in adventure for prizes whose value they could never know. Men left England and circled the globe; they fished in distant waters;[7-2] they bartered with strange peoples; but in the main they returned again to England. No colonial policy was required to meet their needs.
After 1600, however, they less often returned. They settled the new lands, and grew great in wealth and population. They organized governments and huge instruments of trade. Slowly the fabric grew that was to dwarf England in size and resources, and England, failing to understand that it was no loser thereby, but richer as a part of a {8} strengthening Pan-Angle civilization, found little light on the problems arising. In 1607 Virginia and in 1620 Massachusetts were permanently settled.[8-1] During the same years Englishmen were acquiring titles and trading rights in India. Here, at the outset, we have all the elements that long made for obscurity and discord.
In Virginia and Massachusetts the land was suitable for the occupations and for the breeding of white men. These settlements were typical of many in North America, South Africa, and Australasia. The settler changed his latitude and longitude, but little else. He pushed back the natives, from the land he desired to use, gave the place an English name, and proceeded about his affairs with his fundamental ideals, habits, and institutions unaltered. He brought from England, besides furniture and bricks for his house, his language, his religion, and his notions of government. These he preserved and handed down to his children, who in turn thought and behaved as though Englanders, and in two localities, a hemisphere apart, named their land New England. Self-government was one of their inherited ideas; they believed that he who supports the government with taxes should be represented therein. Settlements such as these are here distinguished as colonies. The first sprang from England, and in some cases have themselves been the prolific parents of new colonies. But of whatever origin, all are a product of the individualism of the Pan-Angle civilization. In them self-government {9} has been a question of time only. "Assemblies were not formally instituted, but grew of themselves because it was the nature of Englishmen to assemble. Thus the old historian of the colonies Hutchinson, writes under the year 1619, 'This year a House of Burgesses broke out in Virginia.'"[9-1] However strongly such colonies may be attached by sentimental and political ties to some other governmental group, they belong to themselves alone. On terms of equality they are part of the Pan-Angle power that controls the world.
In India, and in the many other instances of the same sort, the land was not suited for the occupations and for the breeding of white men. It was filled with native inhabitants who neither gave way before the European, nor assimilated with him. The English language, law, and governmental forms might be superimposed to some degree, but the great bulk of the people continued to think, talk, and act in ways that were not our ways. Their civilization, however high, was not our civilization. Such lands, and only such lands, may be called "possessions" of any Pan-Angle nation. Ceylon belongs to the British Isles; the Cook Islands belong to New Zealand; Papua belongs to Australia; and the Philippines belong to the United States. Because they "belong to" another than themselves, these lands are called dependencies.
The men who ruled England in 1600 could not anticipate this distinction so as to make their phraseology, their thoughts and their efforts at {10} government correspond. Nor, as years passed, did they come to understand it. Often they knew little about these settlements, except that all were distant very many days sailing. In general, the tendency was to act as though all were possessions belonging to England and subject to its will. To the statesman in London it might seem at most a theoretical difference; not so to the man on the spot. If he were a colonist he felt his land a part of the Mother Country, or its equal in a larger group of which both were parts. His land did not and could not belong to England in any sense that gave him less liberty than Englanders enjoyed.
Here, on the one side, was a stubborn fact; on the other, an inability to recognize that fact. Friction resulted. In 1707 England united with Scotland to form Great Britain. But Great Britain, like England, thought colonies possessions. It so regarded the American colonies. Friction increased.
The colonists understood what it was to desire to be "part of" and to find they were considered as "belonging to." In Taunton, Massachusetts, they raised a liberty pole, October 21, 1774. From it flew the flag of Great Britain bearing the words "Liberty and Union." To the pole was affixed the following lines:
CRESCIT AMOR PATRIAE LIBERTATIS QUE CUPIDO "Be it known to the present, And to all future generations, That the Sons of Liberty in Taunton Fired with a zeal for the preservation of {11} Their rights as men, and as American Englishmen, And prompted by a just resentment of The wrongs and injuries offered to the English colonies in general, and to This Province in particular, . . ."[11-1]
Not enough of the Pan-Angle statesmen of those days had the insight to read rightly that inscription. It was only by severing the Pan-Angles that the American colonies demonstrated that their citizens were the peers of the citizens of Great Britain.
Yet there were men on both sides of the Atlantic who even in those days appreciated that one group of English-speaking white men cannot be controlled by another. They understood the equality of citizenship in all Pan-Angles. Of these men it is enough to mention five: Burke of Ireland, whose words "ring out the authentic voice of the best political thought of the English race,"[11-2] and who gave us the "Conciliation with America"; Otis of Massachusetts, whose speech against the Writs of Assistance was only the beginning of his work; Galloway of Pennsylvania, the Loyalist who refused re-election to the 1775 Continental Congress when he had to choose {12} between America and Great Britain; Pownall of England, Governor of Massachusetts 1757-1760, and later Member of the British Parliament 1768-1780; and Franklin of Pennsylvania, who with Pownall worked for Pan-Angle unity on both sides of the Atlantic till he, like Galloway, had to decide, and ended by choosing not Great Britain but his own nation. The first was never in America; the second was never in England; the third saw England in his exile only after American nationhood was established; and the fourth and fifth knew both England and America.
These men did not discover to Pan-Angles the doctrine of no taxation without representation. That, like many other alleged Americanisms, was a Pan-Angle tenet already old. "The Principality of Wales, said Galloway, the Bishopric of Durham, and the Palatinate of Chester, laboured, just as America, under the grievance of being bound by the authority of Parliament without sharing the direction of that authority. They petitioned for a share, and their claim was recognized. When Henry VIII., he continued, conquered Calais, and settled it with English merchants, it was so incompatible with English liberty to be otherwise, that Calais representatives were incorporated in the English Parliament."[12-1] But these five men may {13} be said to be among those who rediscovered this tenet. As such they shared in the formation of the nationhood not only of America, but also of the five new nations of the Britannic world.
In 1801 Great Britain and Ireland were formed into one political unit under the official title of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in these pages referred to as the British Isles. And still the distinctions between "part of" and "belonging to" were not understood in the British Isles. Colonies and dependencies grew in importance and size, many of the former having colonies and dependencies of their own; and still their radical differences were not clearly recognized. Repeatedly such colonies as Canada, New Zealand, or South Africa have reasserted the Pan-Angle principle that one group of self-governing white men cannot be the possession of another. So strong has been the effect of this reiteration that now there is some tendency in the British Isles to err on the other side, and to consider India, the Malay States, and other dependencies as though they hold, or should hold, the same status as colonies.
Failure to distinguish between areas that are self-governing and those that are not leads to a loose application of terms which contributes to further obscurity of thought. One recent instance is striking in its subtle suggestiveness. Most of the Malay Peninsula has been taken under the surveillance of the British Isles. Gradually one native ruler after another has been induced to desire the friendship of the men who came from the British Isles.
Some of the areas so acquired are dubbed {14} "States."[14-1] The collective government of this group of "States" has been given the grandiloquent title "Federated Malay States," The Pan-Angle student, familiar with federation in the English-speaking nations which have already succeeded in their autonomous efforts, cannot but be confused by hearing the word "federated" applied to regions where self-government is not even spoken of, and where the inhabitants take their political orders from such officials as are appointed by their white conquerors. The confusion is increased when a battleship guaranteed with funds of the Federated Malay States is presented to the government of the British Isles, and is made the occasion of fulsome speeches about the "loyalty" of the "King's subjects" in the Federated Malay States. The uninformed persons of the British Isles and elsewhere may not realize that this gift of the battleship Malaya means simply the imposition of additional taxes on the conquered subjects that "belong to" the conquering race. This is equally true whether or not has been obtained the approval of the figureheads that are known to the outside world as the "native rulers."[14-2] Such an instance {15} fogs our perception of the problems pressing for solution by the Britannic self-governing peoples.
This confused thinking and failure to appreciate the difference between "part of" and "belonging to" has delayed Pan-Angle progress. It led to the disrupting American Revolution, to the Canadian Rebellion of 1837, and to frictions less in importance only because they were more promptly remedied. It has been an unnecessary difficulty in the way of all schemes proposed for closer Britannic union. Are the self-governing colonies to be united to each other and to the Mother Country?—or to these and to the dependencies besides? The word empire is variously used, and the thought underlying it sometimes vague. To some Britannic writers it refers inclusively to every spot over which the British flag flies, classing all colours and conditions of men in one category.[15-1] Others restrict its use to self-governing areas and peoples.[15-2] To still other minds it connotes lack of self-government, and is applicable only to the dependencies.[15-3] The "imperial parliaments" conjured {16} up by these three definitions are vastly dissimilar. And the New Zealander, for instance, would like to know, before he becomes a party to one, whether he is going to help rule India, or to sit in joint deliberation with its representatives.[16-1]
The British Isles and the countries that have developed from British colonies form numerous and interrelated political groups. The largest, and now most important areas from a racial point of view, are New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Newfoundland, Canada, the British Isles, and the United States of America. In this discussion these seven nations are considered as representing their race. Their peoples are known respectively as New Zealanders, Australians, South Africans, Newfoundlanders, Canadians, Britishers, and Americans. These seven nations hold in actual or allied control lands amounting to sixteen million square miles, with a population of five hundred and thirty-five million people,[16-2] or thirty and thirty-three per cent. respectively of the entire surface, and the entire {17} population of the world. Rome at her greatest dominated a population of one hundred and twenty millions.[17-1] In these seven nations more than one hundred and forty-one millions are white people,[17-2] nearly all speaking the same language, and all enjoying individual liberty of substantial equality. They govern themselves and they govern other peoples of other languages, colours, and ideals, to a total of nearly four times the entire Roman Empire. To the English-speaking whites these subject-peoples owe their privileges, such as they are. Success or failure in governing themselves and others depends for these whites on their ability so to control themselves that no foreign powers can interfere with this world-wide domination.
The words "the English-speaking, self-governing white people of New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Newfoundland, Canada, the British Isles, and the United States of America," make a long expression. No suitable abbreviation seems to have been devised. The word Pan-Angle as a noun and as an adjective is here offered.
{18}
There are various reasons why other words are unsatisfactory. None in existence exactly denotes the meaning which is here desired. Anglo-Saxon may refer to the fusion of two stocks of conquering immigrants who contributed men and vitality of ideas to the present Pan-Angles. Sometimes, however, it has referred to only one of these tribes, the Saxons, and designated them as the Saxons colonizing Angle-land, as opposed to the parent stock, the Saxons of the continent.[18-1] Some writers have employed the word loosely as a collective name for all persons and ideas whose ancestry can be traced to the British Isles. Again, a literature, a law, an architecture, and a language is each called Anglo-Saxon. Moreover, there is a people called Saxons, and a land of Saxony, forming no part of the Pan-Angle group. Anglican is one of our race names, with its roots deep in the past, but it has already a restricted meaning as a name for one of our religious creeds. English is equally unsatisfactory. It is properly applied to our common language and to the people inhabiting a part of the British Isles. Even this seemingly simple meaning has not been faithfully preserved. Writers, otherwise careful, speak of the English flag and the English Parliament, when they mean the flag and Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Robert Louis Stevenson, by a recent student and author, was called an Englishman![18-2] This inexactness is equally distasteful to those to whom the appellation rightfully belongs, and to those who have names of their own of which they are proud.
{19}
To avoid confusion, the word English in this discussion is restricted as far as possible to the language alone, or is used in the sense of belonging to or originating in England. The term England refers only to the geographic area bearing that name.[19-1] The inhabitants of England are herein referred to as Englanders.[19-2] It would be well to have a name for these self-governing, English-speaking white people that would direct the mind back to the European stocks, whose bloods have mingled in the British Isles and in these six other nations, and that would suggest the origin of the ideals and of the men that have made possible the present world domination of these people. Failing such an extensively composite and suggestive word, resort is had to the name of one of these many tribes. They are but one of many peoples that went to our making. The Angles to-day exist nowhere as Angles. But they gave their name to our tongue and to the country through which we have inherited much. Every English-speaking schoolboy knows Gregory's exclamation at the sight of the fair-skinned children brought from Britain.[19-3] "Angels," they may have looked to the fervent {20} priest, on their block in the Roman slave market; but, as "inheritors of the earth, successors to Rome about to fall," he might prophetically have saluted them. Their political descendants have abolished slavery throughout a large part of the world. They are the white people who speak English, citizens of the autonomous nations: New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Newfoundland, Canada, the British Isles, and the United States of America. Pan-Angles they are here called, and their nations, Pan-Angle nations.
[3-1] Round Table, London, September 1913, p. 639.
[6-1] C. H. Pearson, History of England during the Early and Middle Ages, London, 1867, vol. i, p. 136.
[6-2] Daniel Defoe, "The True-born Englishman: A Satire," in Novels and Miscellaneous Works, London, 1855, vol. v. pp. 441, 442.
[7-1] Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations Voyages Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, Hakluyt Society reprint, Glasgow, 1904, vol. vii. p. 146: "IN the yere of our Lord 1497 John Cabot a Venetian, and his sonne Sebastian (with an English fleet set out from Bristoll) discovered that land which no man before that time had attempted, on the 24 of June, about five of the clocke early in the morning," Cf. Alfred Caldecott, English Colonization and Empire, London, 1891, p. 28.
[7-2] D. W. Prowse, History of Newfoundland, London, 1895, pp. 28, 58, 83.
[8-1] John Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neighbours, London, 1897, vol. i. pp. 93, 94; John Fiske, The Beginnings of New England, Boston, 1889, pp. 81-83.
[9-1] J.R. Seeley, The Expansion of England, London, 1883, p.69.
[11-1] P. D. Harrison, The Stars and Stripes, Boston, 1906, p. 24; ibid., p. 23: "The Taunton flag was the regular English [Great Britain's] flag, adopted by the union of the aforesaid crosses upon a red field. Its significance lay in its motto, signifying that there was at that time no thought of severance from the mother country, their only thought being liberty of action; and it has historic value because it was the first to wave with that motto."
[11-2] Woodrow Wilson, Mere Literature, Boston, 1900, p. 105.
[12-1] A. L. Burt, Imperial Architects, Oxford, 1913, p. 60. Henry VIII. above should read Edward III. After the battle of Crecy he besieged Calais in 1346. Cf. C.A.W. Pownall, Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, p. 204, who refers to the same ideas as above, quoted from the 4th edition (1768) of Thomas Pownall's The Administration of the Colonies. For maps of these four historical areas, see W. R. Shepherd, Historical Atlas, Boston, 1911, pp. 74 and 84.
[14-1] For a definition of grades of government of dependencies of Britannic nations, see An Analysis of the System of Government throughout the British Empire, London, 1912, pp. 59-61.
[14-2] Round Table, London, September 1913, p. 697: "It is not true that she [Malaya] was offered as the result of pressure by the British Government. She owes her existence partly to the imagination of the Colonial Secretary in the Malay States, who would by general agreement have been well advised to keep his visions to himself instead of communicating them even to sympathetic chiefs, but the Government in the 'Malay States certainly received no suggestion on the subject from the Colonial Office.'"
[15-1] Ency. Brit., vol. iv. p. 606. "Ency. Brit." in this and subsequent notes refers to Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, Cambridge, England, 1910. Also Empire Movement (Non-Party, Non-Sectarian, Non-Aggressive, and Non-Racial), London, 1913; Leaflet 19, Shorter Catechism: "The British Empire is that portion of the Earth's land surface which is subject to the authority of King George."
[15-2] J. R. Seeley, The Expansion of England, London, 1883, p. 46: "The English Empire is on the whole free from that weakness which has brought down most empires, the weakness of being a mere mechanical forced union of alien nationalities. . . . the English Empire in the main and broadly may be said to be English throughout."
[15-3] Cf. G.R. Parkin, Imperial Federation, London, 1892, p. 248: "Unquestionably confusion of thought is caused by the careless use of the term Empire into which English people have fallen. Applied to India and the crown colonies it is admissible, . . . As a name for the 'slowly grown and crowned Republic' of which the mother-land is the type and the great self-governing colonies copies, the term Empire is a misnomer, . . ."
[16-1] Richard Jebb, Studies in Colonial Nationalism, London, 1905, p. 276: "Indeed, the inclusion of India involves the reductio ad absurdum of the imperial-federation theory which forms the logical complement of the expansion-of-England theory."
[16-2] Whitaker's Almanack, London, 1913, pp.479, 646: 16,897,126 square miles and 535,753,952 persons.
[17-1] An Analysis of the System of Government throughout the British Empire, London, 1912, p. v, gives the Roman Empire population as eighty-five millions and the British Empire as four hundred and ten millions. But see Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, London, 1782, vol. i. pp. 51, 52: "We are informed, that when the emperor Claudius exercised the office of censor, he took an account of six millions nine hundred and forty-five thousand Roman citizens, . . . it seems probable, that there existed, in the time of Claudius, about twice as many provincials as there were citizens, . . . and that the slaves were at least equal in number to the free inhabitants of the Roman world. The total amount of this imperfect calculation would rise to about one hundred and twenty millions of persons."
[17-2] Cf. post, p. 81, note 1.
[18-1] Cf. Ency. Brit., vol. ix. p. 588.
[18-2] Price Collier, England and the English, London, 1911, p. 341.
[19-1] As to quoted passages, the reader is cautioned to distinguish in each instance the meanings of the terms England, Britain, Great Britain, British, Britannic, etc. The usage in one quotation may differ from that in another and from that in the non-quoted passages. The terminology in the latter has been adopted to accord with the most accurate and consistent present usage. The only innovation in terms here employed is the word Pan-Angles.
[19-2] Sir Walter Scott, The Abbot, iv.: "I marvel what blood thou art—neither Englander nor Scot," quoted in New English Dictionary, Oxford, 1891—"Englander."
[19-3] Ency. Brit., vol. xii. p. 566.
{21}
II
THE PEOPLE
If an intelligent traveller from Mars were to tour the earth to-day he would jot down in his note-book that New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Newfoundland, Canada, the British Isles, and the United States were all inhabited by the same sort of people. Their language, their forms of government, their ways of thinking and of conducting the various departments of life would lead him to think so. And he would be right. The English-speaking traveller, denied the point of view of an outsider, is prone to take the likenesses for granted and to dwell on the differences, using his own local group as a yard-stick to measure the rest. Beneath his criticism, however, he is conscious that in these countries he is at home in the same sense that he is an alien in all others. Whichever of the seven he may be from, he finds in each of the other six, men he can hardly tell from himself, and realizes that in his own political unit, whose oneness he never questions, there are communities with natures more dissimilar than are the natures of these seven nations. No knowledge of history is needed for either him or the Martian to conclude that while they use different names to designate this part or that, {22} they are speaking always of one people and one civilization.
Of what stuffs the English-speaking people were fashioned has already been explained. England, when colonization began, held the germ of the future Pan-Angles. Within two centuries Scotland and Ireland were united with England and Wales under one government, and the English language and English ideals penetrated further and further into those once Celtic strongholds. Welsh, Scots, and Irish brought their contributions to our development. They wrote English poems and English books. They officered the army and built battleships. They made and administered laws, and furnished prime ministers for the British Isles. Like the Englanders they too migrated to the new Pan-Angle lands, seeking religious or political liberty in some cases, but oftenest seeking the means of a more satisfactory life. These they have found. By this blending of all British Isles stocks came new vitality to the Pan-Angles.
Three centuries ago this diffusion of Britishers began, and it continues to-day in far greater numbers than then.[22-1] Nor have they come less to the United States since it became independent of Great Britain.[22-2] {23} A French student divides the American people into two groups: those whose ancestors were in the United States previous to 1830, and hence almost totally British, and those descended from persons immigrating since that time. The former, according to his computation, comprises more than one-half of the present population of the United States. And of the latter, one-third at least are likewise of British stock. A total of two-thirds, or perhaps even of three-fourths, of the American people to-day are, he concludes, the descendants of Britishers.[23-1] The Irish he considers an important element. Of the result of the mingled immigrations of the Irish and other Celts with the Scandinavians and Germans, an American student says: "When we remember that it was the crossing of the Germanic and the Celtic stocks that produced the English race itself, we are obliged to assume that the future American people will be substantially the same human stuff that created the English common law, founded parliamentary institutions, established American self-government, and framed the Constitution of the United States."[23-2] Of all Pan-Angles a tremendous majority are of British descent. Of all Pan-Angles outside the British Isles a majority are still of British descent; and theirs has been the influence that has made six new nations vastly alike, and like, also, to the Mother Country.
In some instances, notably in Canada and in South Africa, the Pan-Angles found on their {24} arrival other peoples, sprung from European stocks, firmly rooted to the land. Descendants of these first settlers still form communities apart, in which one hears English less often than French or Taal, as the case may be; much as one finds communities in the British Isles where only a form of Celtic is spoken. In other places, too, as in New York and London, are little foreign nuclei engaged in some particular trade, where a man can live and earn his wage and know no English. These are, however, the remarked exceptions.
British blood, moreover, has not in the meantime been stagnant. Through these centuries, as from earliest history, it has been constantly enriched and invigorated by admixtures from the continent of Europe. To the British Isles, South Africa, Newfoundland, Canada, and the United States, non-British peoples have come. Even New Zealand and Australia, almost purely British as they are, have their French and German settlements respectively. In the British Isles the reception and absorption of foreign stocks has been unspectacular. Individuals, or from time to time groups, seeking the larger tolerance of England, have taken up an abode there. One has but to observe and listen in the streets to be convinced that foreign invaders, though with no hostile intent, still land on British soil. Outside the British Isles, this replenishing of the British stock by "foreign" immigrants often presents features that are spectacular—especially where the bulk of the foreigners now arrive—in the United States and Canada.[24-1]
{25}
The immigrant often comes with no ability to speak English or to understand the habits of mind and forms of government of those who do. He may never have been proudly conscious of any nationality. But in an amazingly brief length of time, we find him taking his place among his Pan-Angle fellows and conducting himself as one of them. In one generation he is transformed into a Pan-Angle.
This process of assimilation was formerly unconscious on the part of the receiving nations. Now, as the task has grown more stupendous, special machineries in the way of day and night schools and settlement clubs and classes have been devised in the larger centres, and are maintained at the expense of the public. The immigrant, safely arrived, finds himself still outside the unyielding wall of the English language. He cannot ask for food or work. Even those from his former country talk English together, and jeer at his ignorance. By hard experience and whatever help is offered, he qualifies himself in this first requisite. With his English he acquires much else. He learns words which express ideas peculiar to Pan-Angle psychology. From the words he progresses to the ideas themselves. Thus he learns somewhat of the theory of law and government, and of the aspirations and ideals, and of the expected privileges that have evolved with this language. The pride of the Pan-Angle comes over him, and a faith in those precepts of individual freedom of which he {26} had never dreamed, it may be, until he learned to read and talk of them in English. "An Englishman's house is his castle." Here is a promise of privacy perhaps unknown in the land he has quitted. "Government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed." This is a long step from the doctrine of the Divine Right of kings. Thus with the language goes an atmosphere of many things that are not to be translated, historical heritages which the immigrant must substitute for those of his birth. As he practises the new tongue amid increased material and spiritual comforts, his perception quickens and he is already fairly started to become one of us. "I am an American," he cries; or "I am a Canadian": more noisily, perhaps, because his liberties are newer, but speaking none the less from the same fountains of pride that inspire—"I am an Englishman."
On the second generation the same force operates; the stubbornness of the English-speaking people for their language acts firmly as the Inquisition and gently as a blessing. They attend free schools, read only books written in English from the point of view of English-speaking people and on subjects interesting to such people. Non-Pan-Angle theories of government are non-existent; alien moral standards unheard of. The wall that once hedged the father out, hedges the children in. More often than not they cannot speak the tongue their parents were born to. With Ivanhoe and King Lear they are familiar; they quote Burns and Wordsworth and Longfellow; after local history they study that of England. The history and poets of their fathers' native lands are foreign {27} and unknown. If oratory be demanded, it is Burke or Lincoln who furnish the words and sentiments to young Hans and Pietro.[27-1]
This is a consideration of English-speaking whites, and as such is not concerned with the non-whites of various races and various and inconsistent degrees of subjection or citizenship, who dwell in Pan-Angle countries. The aborigines of the United States and Canada, of New Zealand and Australia, are now problems of the past, solved according to nature's rule of the survival of the fittest. They could not live and increase in the environment the white man was strong enough to throw about them. The negro, numbering almost four times the whites in South Africa[27-2] and one-eighth of the whites in America,[27-3] is a problem yet unsolved, for nature has not yet made it clear which, all things considered, is the most fit. He not only thrives in contact with whites, but with his low standard of living multiplies more rapidly. The Asiatic races are the problem of the future. In every quarter we see a determination that it shall not grow beyond its present incipient stage. All Pan-Angle nations may not be able to obtain, as Australia wishes to, an exclusively white population. {28} But each nation, whenever non-whites appear to endanger the success of white local self-government, are able to exclude from the privilege of the franchise any non-assimilable inhabitants. In each of these seven nations white local autonomy is recognized as necessary. The existence of these problems in no way modifies the definition of Pan-Angles as English-speaking whites who are the self-governing forces in the seven above-named nations.
The language Pan-Angles speak grew out of the Germanic tongues of the Saxons, Angles, Danes, and Jutes. Our most common and familiar words have been in uninterrupted use since the days of those invaders.[28-1] To this Teutonic basis was added the French of the Northmen called Normans. A proclamation of 1258 is sometimes called the first specimen of English,[28-2] but its resemblance to modern speech is not for the uninstructed to discern. Through the thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen hundreds English took on a form more intelligible to us of to-day. In the latter part of the fifteen hundreds a great poet and playwright employed it so effectively that his diction and style became a standard.[28-3] From the same epoch dates the translation of the Bible and its popular use. "The English version of the Bible remains the noblest example of the English tongue, while its perpetual use made it from the {29} instant of its appearance the standard of our language."[29-1]
Thus it came about that in the Mayflower and other early emigrant ships was carried to the new countries an English of authenticated stamp. The standards then recognized are still recognized. This was, however, the English of books and education. Each shire of England in its own speech bore witness to its past. Kent and Yorkshire often could not understand each other, and words used in one were unknown to the other. The emigrating Englander carried with him accordingly, besides the English as established for educated men, the common dialect of his neighbourhood. In the colonies these differences tended to vanish under the influence of the press, free schools, and easy methods of travel; though occasionally in a word, or here and there a pronunciation, the delighted etymologist sees the ghost of some local English usage, as in the old Devon still spoken in Newfoundland.[29-2] In England these local variations of speech have persisted longer, and still puzzle the unaccustomed ear. In America there still exist words and expressions which when they left England were in good usage, but which have there since been dropped. Though the dictionaries of to-day call it an Americanism, Shakespeare wrote: "Better far, I guess, That we do make our entrance several ways."[29-3]
{30}
The variety and interest of the English language does not lie alone in these historical survivals. It has been, and still is, constantly enriched from outside itself. In the colonies and dependencies, and in foreign lands as well, the English language has come in contact with practically all the tongues of the earth. From these it has helped itself according to need or fancy. The result gives locally a strong dash of colour which inevitably tends to tinge the whole. Ranch, trek, amok, portage, taboo, tomahawk, coolie,—have long since ceased to serve limited communities, and stand acknowledged in our dictionaries besides words of Saxon and Norman pedigrees. Spruit, kai, bilabong,—if not lost altogether will come to the same dignity. Whether the new word is taken from another language or coined from English roots as local slang, the story of a growth in usage is the same. The "tramp" and "sun-downer" may consort together in any library with a "creeper," a "tenderfoot," and a "new chum." In language usages we have no authority but our own desires.
Such is our language, a living thing growing in parts, dying in parts, and ever ready to adapt itself to local needs. It is, moreover, uniform, as nearly as any living tongue can be uniform. The peculiarities of speech observed in different localities are enough to furnish picturesque touches for a novel and humour to the stage, but never [30-1] {31} enough to make even the slightest barrier between any two regions. Even so it is a matter largely of pronunciation and inflection. The writer who would suggest the twangs and drawls, and indicate the r's that are rolled or ignored, and the h's insecure in position, has hard work with tortured spelling to accomplish his end. To the art of printing and all the publishing, useful and otherwise, it has made possible; to popular education and the reading it stimulates, we owe a uniform written language. Had the colonists gone forth and builded their nations prior to the days of type and presses and cheap books, the Kansan and Tasmanian might have been to-day as linguistically remote from each other as both are now from the Anglo-Saxons of Bede's days. Instead, though they may "labor" or "labour" according to fancy, and each have his preference about going to "jail" or to "gaol," they are able to pool their literatures and draw from a common fund. To increasingly comfortable and rapid means of transportation, whether of the tourist, the British bagman or American drummer or the job hunter, we are indebted for our homogeneous speech. And in that common speech lies possibly the strongest tie between Pan-Angles and the one that makes all others potent.
Every Pan-Angle is in instant communication with every other Pan-Angle wherever he may meet him. Through books, newspapers, and magazines written in his mother tongue, he may be in constant touch with the doings of the whole Pan-Angle world. American youths study Geikie's Geology in their schools; New Zealanders buy {32} and read the Atlantic Monthly; and the Century Dictionary is in use at Oxford. Men like Lord Bryce and Admiral Mahan write on matters vital to the existence of Pan-Angle civilization; and attention and esteem are theirs from every thoughtful English-speaking man. Through the pulpit, the lecture platform, and the stage, the people of each nation daily form first-hand acquaintance with the representatives of each of the other six—no bar of translation or interpretation standing between. Of the popular authors and novelists, one-half of their readers probably hardly know which are American, which Britannic. Thus our common language produces a continuous interchange of thought which makes for mental unity and keeps us one people.
Through this world-wide interchange of thought we see not only each other, but ourselves, from the point of view of each other. Family criticism is often harsh when most friendly; and among ourselves we speak our minds freely, whether it be tolls, boundaries, or table manners under discussion. Frank opinions are sometimes resented. "I do not talk through my nose," says the American. "Nor do I use my a's like a cockney," retorts the Australian. "I have no accent," rejoins the Englander with an unmistakable drawl. "Look at your police and your yellow press," say six of us, and the American stands ashamed. "Look at the abject misery of your poor and the waste of your fertile lands," and the Englander winces. "Look at your defenceless condition," and Newfoundlanders, Canadians, New Zealanders, Australians, and South Africans all admit the indictment. {33} Mutual criticism is accordingly not without profit. In each other's virtues and failings we find models and warnings, for our ideals are in the main the same, and to no foreign opinion are we so sensitive as to the opinion of other members of our own family.
In Pan-Angle nations there are to-day more people speaking English than have ever before in the world's history spoken one tongue.[33-1] But even outside of those seven nations, English ranks as the world language, the one most useful for commerce, travel, or education. Some maintain that it is the richest language known. On a computation of words that may perhaps be so.[33-2] Others claim it is easy to learn. No one calls it easy to spell. Some say English-speaking people cannot learn other languages; others say they will not. The story is {34} told of a man for many years the only British resident on 1500 miles of Arabian coast. He knew less than a dozen words of Arabic. "How do you carry on your trade?" someone asked. "Oh," he replied, "the beggars have got to learn English."[34-1] Similar is Mr. Dooley's promise to the Filipinos: "An' we'll larn ye our language, because 'tis aisier to larn ye ours than to larn oursilves yours."
That the wide knowledge of its language is a source of advantage to a nation, Benjamin Franklin pointed out in a letter to Noah Webster in 1789: "The Latin language, long the vehicle used in distributing knowledge among the different nations of Europe, is daily more and more neglected; and one of the modern tongues, viz. the French, seems in point of universality to have supplied its place. It is spoken in all the courts of Europe; and most of the literati, those even who do not speak it, have acquired knowledge enough of it to enable them easily to read the books that are written in it. This gives a considerable advantage to that nation; it enables its authors to inculcate and spread throughout other nations such sentiments and opinions on important points as are most conducive to its interests, or which may contribute to its reputation by promoting the common interests of mankind. It is perhaps owing to its being written in French, that Voltaire's treatise on 'Toleration' has had so sudden and so great an effect on the bigotry of Europe, as almost entirely to disarm it. The general use of the French language has likewise a very advantageous effect on the profits of {35} the bookselling branch of commerce, . . . And at present there is no capital town in Europe without a French bookseller's shop corresponding with Paris.
"Our English bids fair to obtain the second place. The great body of excellent printed sermons in our language, and the freedom of our writings on political subjects, have induced a number of divines of differents sects and nations, as well as gentlemen concerned in public affairs, to study it; so far at least as to read it. And if we were to endeavor the facilitating its progress, the study of our tongue might become much more general."[35-1]
By 1856 the use of our language had progressed so that Emerson thought it "destined to be the universal language of men."[35-2]
That we who talk English go about with an assumption of superiority, there is abundant testimony. In 1676 an English ship visited Mauritius, then a possession of Holland. A modern historian quotes from the records of the Dutch Governor: "This breed imagine the Hollanders are of a lower stock, naturally inferior, who ought always to be humbly and servilely at their disposal."[35-3] A Bostonian, who sailed from his home port for Liverpool on news of the ratification of the treaty of Ghent, mentions a British army officer with whom he chatted in London in 1815: "The colonel complimented the American troops in a curious manner by observing that they were brave {36} and it was not to be wondered at since they were 'descendants of Englishmen.' It required all my gravity to make an acknowledging bow for this compliment I frequently found that the bravery displayed by the Americans in the last war was accounted for from this source."[36-1] "They [the Scots] are bumptious, very bumptious," says Goldwin Smith. "They try to force their Burns down our throats."[36-2] "Do not, above all things," counsels an official circular addressed to British emigrants to Canada, "try to impress on your Canadian employer how much better we do things in England, for it will only make him dislike you and perhaps not care to keep you in his employ. Canadians, too, often resent criticism of their country or its methods, but you should remember that they have been working in Canada long before you were born, and that they are more likely than a stranger like yourself to know what suits that country best."[36-3] The American Ambassador, speaking in London in 1913, said "he was asked almost every day by the kindly people whom he met—and he could not too strongly emphasize the word 'kindly' since he had come to England—how they were getting on in the United States assimilating the endless hordes of people from all lands who came to their shores. He did not wish {37} to boast. He was a humble man from the humblest of countries. (Laughter.) But he was delighted to assure them that the Anglo-Saxon, or British, race, who settled the United States first, shaped its destinies, directed its energies, according to their conscience, against their own Motherland, and developed themselves and the great territory which they subdued, to this day, no matter how many men came from how many lands, still ruled it and led it. (Cheers.) And there was no time in sight when that would have changed. Every President of the United States had been of English or Scottish blood dominantly. Out of 121 mayors of cities only 11 per cent. had names which showed that they or their predecessors came from countries other than the United Kingdom. Only 14 per cent. of the representative men who took part in the government of the United States in the House of Representatives or the Senate bore foreign names, which left 86 per cent. who came from the United Kingdom. The Anglo-Saxon was quite as much the leader of men in the great Republic as he was in the great United Kingdom. That was not a boast; it was a natural phenomenon. It was destiny, and they could not help it if they would. Americans deserved no particular praise for it. They believed, just as Englishmen believed, that they were born to rule the world."[37-1] "That complacency which never deserts a true-born Englishman"[37-2] speaks wherever a Pan-Angle voice is raised. {38} Foreign testimony on this point in our character is unanimous, but no foreigner can demonstrate so vividly the arrogance of our self-satisfaction as do we in our every act and attitude. Moreover, what do most of us care about what foreigners think? Was it not Dr. Johnson who said, "All foreigners are mostly fools"?[38-1]
As Pan-Angles we are, in short, the cream of the earth. As Britishers, Americans or Australians we are the cream of the cream. As Englanders, Missourians, or Queenslanders we are something even more superlative. As Londoners, St. Louisans, or Brisbanians,—words fail to express the height of our self-approval. The Englander says little on the subject but, like the calm ungainsayable fog of his habitat, simply is. If called from his high estate to pass judgment, he characterizes the rest of the world as "beastly peculiar." "Colonials," in this term he lumps also the inhabitants of the United States, are to him unfortunates, having "jolly rotten luck to live way off out there." The American, more nervously pitched, raises his voice and talks long about his bigness. "You call that a river?" he indicates the Thames. "Why, if we had a damp streak like that in one of our fields in Iowa, we'd tile it just to keep from getting our feet wet crossing." The Australian, conscious that little attention has been paid him as yet, and conscious too that his "potentialities" are really great, {39} aggressively balances a chip for the inspection of critics. His sheep, his harbour, his apples, his stars—woe to anyone who fails to acquiesce in their paramount excellence! "And after all," he sighs, returned from the other fair places of the earth, "after all, there is only one Sydney."
Such are our local prides, or such at least do they appear in their most blatant types. "The habit of brag runs through all classes"[39-1] wherever we live. Those of us who observe the good form of appearing tolerably meek-minded, are perhaps at heart no more so. Why, then, do we smile tolerantly at all the world and take no offence at each other. Because each is confident of his own place in the sun, and confident too that the Pan-Angles, although he may not use that term, by virtue of these very local prides, are one in their desire and determination to maintain their civilization against all others who are not of our language and our ways.
An American was one day asked by a cutlery salesman from Birmingham (England), "Are you not humiliated by having no national language?" "We have one," was the prompt reply; "it is English." So would have spoken a Canadian or a Newfoundlander, a South African, a New Zealander, or an Australian. That is one of our prides. Our language is ours. It reflects our many-rooted origins, our varied and severally branched histories, our constantly converging growths. It binds us to the ideals of our kind. Its very name takes us in imagination to the infancy of our race, where {40} from subservience to the wills of others the individual emerged. "The English have given importance to individuals, a principal end and fruit of every society. Every man is allowed and encouraged to be what he is, and is guarded in the indulgence of his whim. 'Magna Charta,' said Rushworth, 'is such a fellow that he will have no sovereign.' By this general activity and by this sacredness of individuals, they have in seven hundred years evolved the principles of freedom. It is the land of patriots, martyrs, sages and bards, and if the ocean out of which it emerged should wash it away, it will be remembered as an island famous for immortal laws, for the announcement of original right which make the stone tables of liberty."[40-1] To acknowledge the relation of America to the land of these struggles and their earliest successes can never be humiliating. England's past belongs to us all, and to-day England is one of us. There, was cradled the individualism of our Teuton forbears that has grown into a civilizing world-wide domination. We all have helped to nurture and shield it. We are as seven guardians whose harmony is secured not only because they are one in aim and method but because being one in language they are bound into understanding.
The Pan-Angle enjoys the highest standard of living known to any comparable number of people in the world, either formerly or to-day. If civilization depends on the margin of wealth above mere {41} means of existence, Pan-Angles are the most civilized of the races.
Given a hypothetical community possessed only of such material resources that all the energies of every member must be used to provide food and protection from the elements, and there is presented the lowest possible standard of living. Anything lower would mean starvation, exposure, and death. Add but ever so little to those resources, so that some few, still fed and sheltered, may employ their energies in other ways, and they may become scientists and prolong the lives of their fellows and teach them more productive methods of food getting; they may become artists and poets for the delight and recreation of the rest; they may devise laws and systems of government to regulate labour and control wealth; and may develop certain instinctive cravings into hopeful religions. The community has now taken its first steps toward what we call civilization. Add further to the resources, increase the amount of energy that can be spent in channels other than the maintenance of life, and there is developed a complex organism, with churches and schools, music and literature, steam transportation, electric machinery, and contrivances of many other sorts to make life comfortable, enjoyable, and inspiring. Between this hypothetical primitive community and civilization as the Pan-Angles understand it are many stages, some of them occupied to-day by our neighbours whose material resources have not increased to the extent of ours. Now, of all the world, the people having most time and strength {42} after their physical necessities are secured are the Pan-Angles.
The per capita wealth and the per capita land holdings of the Pan-Angles are greater than those of any other comparable number of people. Their diet is more generous, more costly, and more varied. Their apparel is more expensive, and their housing more capacious and more comfortable. They are able to support a greater number of instructors and entertainers in their writers, artists, and musicians. Hardly an act of their lives, hardly an article they use, but has some embellishment not strictly necessary to life and utility. With all this the Pan-Angles, so much have they beyond the mere means of existence, furnish lavishly the pleasures of the so-called "higher life" to their own souls. They study philosophies and ponder the rights of man; they support the weak and economically useless with the proceeds of their own labour. They send of their wealth to other civilizations, as missionary reports testify, trying to contribute to their welfare. And with all this spending, they still have at their disposal such resources that they increase in numbers from generation to generation, and each generation has more than the generation before.
The reason for this high standard of living is not far to seek. We have all this because we have been strong enough to take land, the source of food and shelter, the basis of all life and wealth. The Teutons came and took England; the Normans came and took England; and Pan-Angles since have taken land in every continent and throughout the seas: from the bleak coast {43} and rich shore-fisheries of the Labrador to the fertile plains of the Missouri and the grassy ranges of Otago. In Canada and the United States for years land was the prize that the country offered to pioneers, giving thousands of acres in parcels of one hundred and sixty as long as they lasted. From their land and sea-coast holdings, the Pan-Angles have taken the yield of fish and grain and meat; and those who laboured in getting food produced enough for themselves and for their fellows who were working in other ways. Besides food, these lands provided many other of the essentials of the standard of living we desire.
Other lands rich in promise came under the Pan-Angle gaze. Often there seemed the best of reasons why we should not go and live there. We thereupon set up additional factories at home and made cloth and knives above our own demands to send out to those countries in trade. By working at home in smoky cities we were able to gather the food and the luxuries we wanted from all parts of the world. These lands we have taken into our custody in order to guarantee our trade supremacy. Unproductive spots here and there, such as Gibraltar, Aden, Singapore, and Hong Kong, we have been forced to hold to facilitate and protect our trade. In the main we acquired some very valuable pieces—the most valuable in sight some of our rivals have thought. We never know how valuable a place may be, and, conversely, we never appreciate what a nuisance a place may be until after we have taken it. Yet, the nuisances we try to turn to useful account.
{44}
Land to occupy or to trade with, the Pan-Angles have been able to acquire because they were strong. France, Spain, and Holland wanted North America; the Pan-Angles took it. France wanted New Zealand and Australia; the Pan-Angles took them. Portugal and Holland both had ports at Cape Town before the British flag flew there. And as to dependencies or trade lands, India, Mauritius, Malacca, Ceylon, the Philippines, were all wrested from other nations, while hosts of islands in every sea fell undisputedly to us, only because no other powers felt strong enough to contest the point. If at any time we had been unable to take these, we should have been unable to grow and increase our standard of living to its present degree of comfort. There is among us to-day a great abhorrence of war. We should like to abolish it together with pain, death, and all other evils. The human race has already learned and accomplished much toward that end. Doubtless more will be revealed. That our presence here, however, and that of our children to come, is due to the efforts our fathers displayed, seems evident. Perhaps we ought not to risk that heritage too lightly.
Not a single Pan-Angle is willing to reduce his race numbers. He wishes his children to live and to have children in turn. Not a single Pan-Angle is willing to reduce his standard of living. He wishes for himself more leisure, more nourishing and cleaner food, greater safety in all his employments. He wishes to see no poverty and no discomfort. He is busy passing laws in all his legislatures to-day in his efforts to attain all this.
What the Pan-Angle has, he got by taking land {45} and making the best use he knew of it. For years the British Isles alone of the Pan-Angle nations sent out migrants. For years the British Isles alone was the manufacturing country, the others growing food for themselves and for export. The United States is now sending out migrants; it is likewise sending out less and less food. Pownall foresaw that "when the field of agriculture shall be filled up . . . the moment that the progress of civilisation, carried thus on its natural course, is ripe for it, the branch of manufactures will take its shoot and will grow and increase with an astonishing exuberancy."[45-1] The same future doubtless faces the other five of us. New lands are less easy of acquisition in these days. We have recently enlarged our holdings in the neighbourhood of the two poles, but the opportunities even there grow fewer. Lands are becoming more thickly populated and better defended. But beyond that, we have developed certain scruples that our forefathers in their takings did not know. Only a need equal to theirs will perhaps impel us to similar exercise of force. That need will not come until our standard of living is threatened. Colonizing apart, there is left to us trade; and trade apart, we still have our present lands to develop to their highest point. This problem of development is now receiving our best attention. We support costly bureaus and experiment stations to discover and teach us the means of so intensively cultivating that we may get the highest possible yield from our land. We shall not relax these efforts.
But as we utilize our lands and increase our {46} trade, other civilizations will be desiring to raise the standards of living among their increasing populations. They will need more land. They will covet some of our little-used pieces, Northern Canada or Northern Australia, lands we mean to develop ourselves. No Pan-Angle is minded to part with them. Our rivals, as they grow, will need more trade in order to keep more factories busy to buy more food. They may covet our markets, so that rice and tea and rubber from our present possessions may come to them. If at any time we lose land or trade, by so much must part of our numbers suffer, must be less well housed, and less well nourished, less well cared for if sick. No Pan-Angle sees his way to closing up his factories or to putting himself in a position where he and his children can build no more. More babies mean a demand for more food, and we hope to give them more advantages of every sort. The only way to retain our lands and our trade is to be strong enough to protect them. There is no cheaper nor more effective strength than in co-operation.
[22-1] Whitaker's Almanack, London, 1913, p. 484: 454,527 British and Irish emigrants left the British Isles in 1911. Of these 80,770 went to Australasia; 30,767 to South Africa; 184,860 to Britannic North America; and 121,814 to the United States.
[22-2] A. L. Burt, Imperial Architects, Oxford, 1913, pp. 123-124: "In sixty years (1815-1876) eight and a half million people had emigrated from Great Britain. Of these only three million settled in the Colonies. The rest went to the United States. . . ."
[23-1] Pierre Leroy-Beaulieu, Les Etats-Unis au VingtiÈme Siecle, Paris, 1904, pp. 25-26.
[23-2] F. H. Giddings, Democracy and Empire, New York, 1900, pp. 296-297.
[24-1] Round Table, London, September 1913, p. 723: "Last year the United States received immigrants from other countries equal to three-quarters of one per cent. of the total population. The influx to Canada was between six and seven per cent. of the total population."
[27-1] Boston (Massachusetts) Transcript, November 19, 1913: "Chicago, Nov. 19—Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address, which was delivered fifty years ago to-day, was read to-day to the one million pupils in the public schools of Illinois. Pupils above the sixth grade had memorized the address and recited it at the hour at which President Lincoln began his speech. To-night the speech will be repeated in nearly every night school and social centre in the State."
[27-2] Britannica Year Book, London, 1913, p. 703.
[27-3] Cf. post, p. 81, note 1.
[28-1] Ency. Brit., vol. ix. p. 597.
[28-2] Ibid., vol. ix. p. 594.
[28-3] Ibid., vol. ix. p. 596.
[29-1] J. R. Green, A Short History of the English People, London, 1898, vol. ii. p. 934.
[29-2] J. G. Millais, Newfoundland and its Untrodden Ways, London, 1907, p. 339.
[29-3] Henry VI., Pt. I., Act II., Scene i., line 29. Cf. John Bartlett, Concordance of Shakespeare, London, 1894—" Guess."
[30-1] Also Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Canterbury Tales, _(A) _The Prologue," in The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, W. W. Skeat ed., Oxford, 1894, vol. iv., line 82: "Of twenty yeer of age he was, I gesse." Ibid., line 117: "A forster was he, soothly, as I gesse."
[33-1] The world contains one hundred and sixty million English-speaking people, according to Whitaker's Almanack, London, 1913, p. 99. Of the one hundred and twenty millions computed to have been under the control of the Roman Empire only a portion spoke Latin.
[33-2] The Outlook, New York, August 9, 1913: "Four new words are added to the English language every day, if we may accept the dictionaries as a standard of measurement. During the last three centuries the rate of growth of the dictionaries has been 1500 words a year. In 1616 John Bullokar . . . published his Compleat English Dictionary, with 5080 words. . . . There are now in fact 600,000 English words, but about one-quarter of this number are rare scientific terms or words that are obsolete or obsolescent." Cf. Boston (Massachusetts) Transcript, May 28, 1913, Franklin Clarklin, "A Supreme Court of the Language ": "This year will see the issue of an English language dictionary containing 450,000 words. It is said that the largest German dictionary including personal words has 300,000 words, a French one 210,000 words, a Russian and an Italian 140,000 words each, and a Spanish 120,000 words."
[34-1] Manchester (England) Guardian, March 24, 1913.
[35-1] John Bigelow, The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin, New York, 1888, vol. x, pp. 177-178.
[35-2] R. W. Emerson, English Traits, 1856, Boston reprint, 1894, p.287.
[35-3] Albert Pitot, T' Eylandt Mauritius, 1598-1710, Port-Louis, Ile Maurice, 1905, p. 178.
[36-1] J. B. Crocker, ed., England in 1815, as Seen by a Young Boston Merchant: Being the Reflections and Comments of Joseph Ballard on a Trip through Great Britain in the year of Waterloo, Boston, 1913, p. 22.
[36-2] Arnold Haultain, Goldwin Smith His Life and Opinions, London, p. 162.
[36-3] Quoted, The Times Weekly Edition, London, October 17, 1913.
[37-1] The Times Weekly Edition, London, July 25, 1913. Account of Anglo-Saxon Club Dinner, July 18, 1913.
[37-2] R. W. Emerson, English Traits, 1856, Boston reprint, 1894, p. 280. Cf. ibid., p. 145: "An English lady on the Rhine hearing a German speaking of her party as foreigners, exclaimed, 'No, we are not foreigners; we are English; it is you that are foreigners.'
[38-1] Cf. Price Collier, England and the English, London, 1911, p.359.
[39-1] R.W. Emerson, English Traits, 1856, Boston reprint, 1894, p.145.
[40-1] R. W. Emerson, English Traits, 1856, Boston reprint, 1894, p.291.
[45-1] C. A. W. Pownall, Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, p. 401.
{47}
III
INDIVIDUALISM
The individualism of the Pan-Angles is rooted in our earliest struggles for personal liberty, and its first successes were won far beyond the confines of known history. The institutions in which it is expressed we trace back through English to Teuton practices, where they are lost from sight. How they have been modified and enlarged since, and what we have wrought under the impulse of this dominant characteristic is abundantly recorded. It is the mainspring of all our achievement.
The Pan-Angles collectively are conservative and slow to move. They respect tradition and law, and break with the past less easily than more volatile peoples. The individual Pan-Angle, on the other hand, makes often his own law, disregarding and outrunning the law of his group. It is a trait we approve; the Robin Hoods ashore and the Drakes afloat have our sympathy, as well as often our gratitude for the substantial gifts their individual enterprise has left us. No theory, no agreed-upon plan has led us in our various endeavours, but always the success of some man who went that way on his own. Adventurers have gone out across trackless land or water wastes, and we have followed with our commerce and settlers. {48} Idealists have gone questing for religious or civil liberty, and we, guided by their footprints, draw bills of rights, reform our property laws, and our suffrage, and remove religious disabilities.
From less than sixty thousand our holdings have increased to more than sixteen million square miles,[48-1] through the spirit of individual men. Each acquisition presents similar features. A Pan-Angle wanders off and finds something he wishes. He takes it. Sometimes he calls on the homestayers for aid. Sometimes they give it; often not. Seven times the British Isles refused to acknowledge that the British flag flew over New Zealand;[48-2] and the Queenslanders, who in 1883 raised the Britannic colours in New Guinea, were ordered from London to lower them again.[48-3] The pioneer puts the best he has into the struggle, for far from being an altruist with one eye on a grateful posterity, he is fighting for his own valued possession, whether it be land, the right to trade, or to collect copra in comfort. If there is room for more than one, and the chance of success promising, other adventurous individuals join him. Together they at last attract the ear of the home government which, if induced to interfere, does so to protect the interests of its citizens—or subjects, as the case may be—from outside encroachment. The sway of the Pan-Angles has thus been {49} extended-a little.[49-1] The next little will be added in a similar manner. No one plans for it, but in some opportune moment the leader arises.
In some cases elaborately organized companies with directors and stockholders seem to take the place of the individual. That is only seeming. Whether it be the East India Company, or the Hudson's Bay Company, or the British South Africa Company, there is always a Rhodes at the heart of it. And half of its success in the end depends on agents who take their own counsel and work by themselves, thereby extending their company's power, as the company extends the nation's. That this character was recognized from the beginning witnesses the Royal Charter granted "the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay."[49-2]
Of the men who failed to make good, who could not take what they wanted, we hear little. Their dreaming and daring, their judgment and fortitude, are their own affair; they are part of the unenlisted legion our individualism has produced. A sympathetic editor in America writes as follows of a young English individualist in Somaliland: "Richard Conyngham Corfield . . . was stationed in one of the most inaccessible and undesirable of Britain's many wild lands. He hoped to make a name for himself, to conquer a little empire of his own and restore it to his country, to humiliate the Mad Mullah who had humiliated England, and to earn promotion. So, on his own responsibility, he {50} led his little army against the fanatic horde of the Mullah. The spirit of adventure moved him as it moved the heroes of the early days of British empire building. He lost, as many another adventurer has lost; had he won he would have been remembered for some time. But, having lost all, even his name will be forgotten within a twelvemonth."[50-1]
Extended holdings in personal liberty have been won for us by this same individualism. A cargo of tea was stolen and maliciously destroyed, and now Pan-Angles feel certain they have the right to vote their own taxes. The city of Birmingham, England, in 1819, elected a representative to the Parliament of the British Isles, in which it was allowed no representation.[50-2] In 1832 a Reform Bill gave them and all their neighbours a share in parliamentary legislation. John Brown was hanged for "treason, and conspiring and advising with slaves and other rebels, and murder in the first degree."[50-3] But within four years slavery had been abolished in the United States, and every school child in America for years gave vocal testimony that, while their hero's body lay "a-mouldering in the grave," his soul went "marching on."
With individualism goes self-reliance—having these we are also self-sufficient. We want our ways of doing things, and are ready to sacrifice a great deal to get them, for we know our ways are right. We want room in which to express ourselves. Daniel Boone left his Kentucky home {51} when a neighbour moved to within twenty miles of him, because the country was becoming too thickly settled. Others like him trudged mile by mile across the whole North American continent.[51-1] With them went Pan-Angle women.[51-2] In the conflict for the possession of North America, the Pan-Angles won. They were still of true British blood, while the French were largely Indian.[51-3] The French had adapted themselves to the country, while the Pan-Angles had adapted the country to themselves. Arrived after successive generations at the Pacific Coast they were still Pan-Angles with their essential characteristics unchanged. In the back-blocks of New Zealand and Australia, and the table-lands of Rhodesia, men of the same type are living to-day. If their individualism is intensified and in their own opinion improved, it is because they have plenty of room. The pushing American is but the individual Britisher let loose in a larger field. These men may be described in the words Pownall used of the Americans: "An unabated application of the powers of individuals and a perpetual struggle of their spirits sharpens their wits and gives constant training to the mind. . . . This turn of character, which in the ordinary {52} occurrences of life is called inquisitiveness, and which, when exerted about trifles goes even to a degree of ridicule in many instances, is yet, in matters of business and commerce, a most useful and efficient talent."[52-1] An Australian, as he describes himself, in his roomiest of our nations, "is little other than a transplanted Briton, with the essential characteristics of his British forbears, the desire for freedom from restraint, however, being perhaps more strongly accentuated."[52-2]
With all his individualism the Pan-Angle has a gift for combining. He would rather act alone. But when desirous of results he cannot obtain by himself, he is not afraid of uniting with his fellows. In order to combine effectively, mutual confidence is necessary. We have that trust ability. Indeed, we use the very word "trust" to designate in popular parlance certain combinations: "the money trust," "the labour trust," and the multitudinous other smaller and lesser combinations, down to the facetiously referred to "plumbers' trust," which all appear huge in direct proportion to the distance of the spectator. Viewed with the eye of the insider, such aggregations of capital and power are merely the co-operations of many individuals to produce results—it may be the building of a railroad or the distribution of a food—that no one could accomplish alone. It has been the outsider who objected to their power. To our combinations in the matter of government few of us object, {53} because we all are insiders. Much of our progress in the path of individual freedom has come through combining.
The barons combined to secure Magna Carta. New Zealanders use their government (the combination at their disposal) to remedy injustices against their individual members.[53-1] The thirteen American states, each bristling with a sense of individualism, recognized that they could secure this precious possession only through joining together. Benjamin Franklin had voiced their situation earlier, when he said: "If we do not hang together, we shall hang separate." Their first attempt at combination had to be discarded because they were not hanging together firmly enough. But from 1789 to 1914, their second effort has exhibited to the world the largest voluntary political association as yet seen, proving a new method of adjusting local needs and differences. It has succeeded in so much that it has bound together a nation, or an assemblage of nations {54} now numbering forty-eight, in security and prosperity, while retaining to each individual locality and to each citizen a fair share of the liberties for which the race has long been striving.
While these political combinations are guarding our individualism they are at the same time dependent upon it. "England expects her navy will do its duty," was not the signal Nelson hoisted on the Victory. His appeal was to "every man." "Keep cool and obey orders," admonished Dewey at Manila, recognizing that in the intelligent self-subordination of each member of each crew lay the strength of his fleet.
The individualism of the Pan-Angle forms the keynote of all his theories and practices as to government. He wants to attend to his own affairs. He prefers to give personal attention to the making and administering of laws. In so far as it seems impossible or impracticable to do this, he has recourse to the best alternative, and wishes someone representing him to attend in his stead to those matters. This representative is often limited in power by written instructions from his principal, and provision is made in some cases for the revision of the agent's acts by the same ultimate power. And to whatever extent changing circumstances make again feasible the personal participation of the individual, to that extent he dispenses with the services of his deputy. Here is the whole story of government among the Pan-Angles.
Early accounts of the Germanic tribes tell us {55} that the freemen assembled to determine matters of public concern, and there each in person gave his opinion and assented or dissented to the opinions of others. This was a simple presentative government: each man presenting himself at the meeting or moot, and speaking in his own interests. Laws were made, and leaders or kings chosen and deposed. Only lesser questions were for the chiefs, the important questions were for the community.[55-1]
As the areas having common interests widened, not all the men who had the right found it convenient to attend the assembly. They might still present themselves at some local gathering, a town meeting, or a burgh meeting, within range of their travelling powers, but to the more general assembly only the great and strong were able to go. There grew up the practice, too, that summons should be sent out, inviting to the assembly. This worked to discourage the full attendance of all who formerly had the right to come. The Witenagamot or Witan, gathering of wise men, is the name by which this early legislative body was known.
In 1068 all the landowners of England repaired to a great assembly at Salisbury to swear fealty to William the Conqueror. Part of them were summoned personally, and in time came to claim a right to a summons to succeeding assemblies. In these they were more or less powerful according to the nature of the king, and more than once extorted from him charters of rights, re-establishing or enlarging their ancient privileges. For two centuries {56} they participated in the form of electing kings. The vast multitude, however, the "land-sitting men," were summoned to Salisbury in a body, and for that occasion only, and gradually lost all right of personal attendance at later assemblies.[56-1]
Meanwhile the Angles and Saxons and their Teutonic kindred had long—even before leaving the continent—been familiar with the idea of representation.[56-2] Free men might be appointed or selected, not necessarily by vote, to attend a moot, including several towns or burghs, with authority to act there in the name of their fellows. And when, after the Norman Conquest, the people had sufficiently recovered themselves to be able to refuse taxes levied without their consent, the natural method of giving or withholding that consent was through representatives.
If the king wanted money, he might ask the lords and bishops who were present and could speak for themselves in his councils, but he must ask also the people who, unable to present themselves in a vast body, were represented by some one who spoke for them.
King John in 1213 bids "discreet men" from each shire come to Oxford,[56-3] and his son Henry III. in 1254 issues a writ requiring "to cause to come before the King's Council two good and discreet Knights of the Shire, whom the men of the county {57} shall have chosen for this purpose in the stead of all and of each of them, to consider along with the knights of other shires what aid they will grant the king."[57-1] In a similar writ of 1295 the term "to be elected" is first used instead of the less specific instruction "chosen."[57-2] The word representative, to describe such a person "chosen" or "elected" "with full and sufficient power for themselves and for the community"[57-3] was not yet in use. It appears in print in Cromwell's time,[57-4] and was then possibly new political jargon.
The council so composed developed into the British Parliament, that name coming into use for it in 1275.[57-5] With the king it was for years the law-making power of the British Isles. The peers held their seats in the House of Lords by personal right, as did the wise men of the Witenagamot.[57-6] They acted on their own account, and were responsible to no one. The members of the House of Commons held their seats by no personal right, but as representatives of a large body of commoners {58} who could not all attend. They were chosen for this purpose, and derived authority from the people who employed them. The king in his own right gave or withheld his sanction to the measures agreed upon by the two houses. It followed that the king and peers had no vote for representatives in Parliament, as, being present to act for themselves, they needed none.
The character of the law-making power has gradually altered. Since the days of Queen Anne no sovereign has attempted to veto a bill passed by Parliament.[58-1] Since 1834 no sovereign has dismissed a ministry,[58-2] nor has he formed one,[58-3] and the ministry has come to be responsible to the representative branch of Parliament alone. From 1835 to 1911 the presentative branch was purely a revising chamber.[58-4] Since 1911 it has been permitted to delay only, but not to prevent, the passing of a law desired by the representative branch, Parliament becoming thus in essence unicameral. The king and the lords hold positions of great historical and sentimental value; their personal influence may be as great as they can make it. The House of Commons, however, is now the sole power of legislation in the British Isles. It is hence fair to say that the presentative element is negligible in the national government of the British Isles.
Across the Atlantic went the developing political structures of the Pan-Angles. The colonists, in the simplicity of their social organization, approached early Teuton conditions. They {59} had the benefit, however, of all the experience the race had accumulated since that time. In New England from the earliest settlement till to-day the town meeting has been at the basis of government. It is the folk moot flourishing in new soil, and with the House of Lords (as it existed till 1911) could claim descent from the presentative government of our political forbears in the German forests. Of Virginia it is written that in "1619 a House of Assembly 'broke out' in the colony . . . then just twelve years old. In that Assembly we see the first-born child of the British Parliament, the eldest brother, so to speak, of the legislatures of the United States and of the English colonies of to-day. This Assembly was composed of a council and a body of twenty-two representatives from the eleven plantations, elected by the freeholders, imposing taxes and passing laws, meeting either annually or at frequent intervals."[59-1] In this manner were our notions of representative government transplanted.
A representative is not necessarily chosen by the people he represents.[59-2] In the early parliamentary days he often was not, but was arbitrarily appointed by the king. Since then the people have taken upon themselves the right of designating who is to represent them, and an increasingly large number of any given community has gained participation in that right. In some cases the people have arranged to make their choice indirectly. An example is the election prior to 1913 of United States senators by the people of the {60} state, but through the state legislature; another, is the appointment of the upper house, as in New Zealand, by the elected members of the lower house. But as evidence of the people's wish to keep control over their representatives, one may note the agitation for direct election in both these cases, and the virtual direct election of senators in some states of the United States, even before the Seventeenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States came into force in 1913.[60-1]
There are certain difficulties attendant upon representation. The agent may fail truly to represent, and the Pan-Angle people are constantly seeking to devise and perfect methods of minimizing this difficulty. One means toward that end has been sets of written instructions called constitutions,[60-2] adopted by the people and set over their representatives. The written Constitution of the United States and those of its original thirteen states were early edicts of the people restricting the power of the people's representatives. In the political talk of our times we find persistently recurring the words initiative, referendum, and recall.[60-3] What success will attend the movements for which they stand, movements which merely extend or return to ancient practices, it is too early to say. But the thing that is plain is that these are all efforts of the people to exercise their right to govern themselves presentatively, because they {61} think representation in present practice not entirely satisfactory.
Once presentative government over even a comparatively small area was impracticable because of the time necessary to cover distances. Now the results of an election involving millions of voters and extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific can be known a few hours after the closing of the polls. Burke thought the two months' sailing between Great Britain and America an insuperable obstacle to joint representation, although Franklin and Pownall disagreed with him.[61-1] Such is our speed of travel to-day that representatives from every Pan-Angle nation could reach North America in less than a month. Not only that, but thanks to electricity, a referendum could be held all over the Pan-Angle countries to-day as successfully as the town meeting was held a hundred years ago. And the decisions it reached would be known throughout the world in a fraction of the time that was needed for the deliberations of the Witan to reach the outskirts of the kingdom.
In what proportion the governments of the seven nations are presentative and in what proportion representative, it would be difficult to tell. Easy it is, however, to recognize these forms everywhere. Whether it is the adult population of New Zealand balloting on national prohibition; the men of a New England town meeting voting its school appropriation; or the members of the House of Lords discussing federation within the British Isles—we have a purely presentative bit of {62} governing. If it is the representatives of an Australian state voting on a minimum wage bill; the members of the British House of Commons passing a compulsory insurance act; or those of a Canadian provincial legislative assembly voting to exclude Asiatics, the principle is identical. Government in these cases is representative.
The tendency is towards an increase in the presentative element, as is evidenced by growing popular control. Not only our laws but our forms of government show this. The Pan-Angle notion of an executive at the time the first colonies were forming was drawn from a kingship which then meant a permanent tenure of office. The president of the United States who holds office for a fixed length of time was created after that model. He represents, but once elected cannot be recalled.[62-1] In the British Isles changes have come about, and the prime minister who now wields executive power can be recalled any day by the people speaking indirectly through their representatives, popular opinion swaying his party adherents to relinquish their efforts in his support.[62-1] In this respect the British Isles organization has proved more sensitive than the American to the spirit of the times.[62-2]
In our governments various individuals and classes, or what would in modern days be called "interests," struggle for supremacy. When a minority is successful we dub it aristocracy or privilege. At one time the king was the privileged minority. In 1215 the barons attacked the {63} privilege of this minority; the king asked to have the matter arbitrated by a third party. The barons, who apparently understood something about arbitration, refused. They also refused to give any assurance of their own good behaviour; Magna Carta was a check on the king only. Moreover "Magna Carta can hardly be said to have introduced any new ideas. As Pollock and Maitland (History of English Law) say 'on the whole the charter contains little that is absolutely new. It is restorative.'" [63-1] Since then many aristocrats have enjoyed special privileges: certain churches, certain forms of industry, holders of certain kinds of property. Against all these in turn the levelling force of democracy has been hurled. It can be said in general that we are travelling, though with a wise conservatism, away from the aristocratic to the democratic, by which is meant that privileges are becoming more seldom to the few and power more usual to the many. Democracy, it seems likely, is to be our common future. But, in the meanwhile, the present stage of all our governments may truly be said to be representative action with presentative sanction.
Allied to the question of government is that of suffrage. While all are subject to the government {64} of the land, only some take active part in determining what it shall be. And here, again, the individualism of the Pan-Angles is an insistent factor. Voters, whether so presentatively or representatively, have been in our past one of the privileged minorities—all individuals reckoned. They are so still. But by constantly receiving into their ranks bodies of newly enfranchised persons, they bid fair to become the majority. Social, religious, property, and educational disqualifications long kept many men from the suffrage. Many of these disabilities have been abandoned, some in all places, others in some places only. Sex alone has kept many from voting. This disqualification has been in places and in some respects removed. Whatever one may believe as to the wisdom of entrusting the ballot to the few or to the many, it has long seemed evident that the race was advancing toward universal adult male suffrage. Now many would say instead that the goal is universal adult suffrage.
On our respective paths toward this goal our various electoral units mark various stages of progress. Identical voting qualifications may be found half a world apart, while neighbouring groups differ. No two probably agree in every slight detail, though the range of dissimilarity is narrow. Certain property and educational tests are not infrequent, especially in the older Pan-Angle organizations. The newer ones, as a rule, are the more democratic. Women hold suffrage privileges in at least some respects very extensively, the newer communities again being more liberal in this. Plural voting obtains in the British Isles. {65} These local differences produce no confusion, but keep our progress orderly.
Of the United States it has been said, "There is a great advantage in having different State governments try different experiments in the enactment of laws and in governmental policies, so that a State less prone to accept novel and untried remedies may await their development by States more enterprising and more courageous. The end is that the diversity of opinion in State governments enforces a wise deliberation and creates a locus poenitentiae which may constitute the salvation of the Republic."[65-1] Equally might this have been stated of the effect of the diversity of opinion in the Pan-Angle units on the progress of the whole civilization.
In no regard more than in the question of suffrage, is seen the value and need of local option. It permits progress in whatever respect progress is possible, and prevents the misfortunes that accompany attempts to force progress where the time and conditions are not ripe for it. Through the exercise of local option the suffrage has been constantly extended, a bit here and a bit there, throughout Pan-Angle countries without seriously affecting our political stability. Any attendant shock is confined within narrow boundaries.[65-2] If Texas and Vermont, Tasmania and South Australia, Transvaal and Cape Province have different suffrage {66} requirements, it is because they differ in history and composition and hence in needs. The desires of their inhabitants could not be satisfied by a single law. To seek to establish one would be to estrange all and satisfy none.
The question of negro suffrage is in point. The northern states of America, where the negroes were comparatively few and were to some degree at least educated, felt favourably toward negro suffrage. After the Civil War the northern voters, acting through the central government, were able to give the vote to the negro, not only within their own borders but throughout the country. The results were most unfortunate. The Pan-Angle population of the southern states thereby lost their local autonomy. The men most fit to govern in these states were forced in self-defence to become law-breakers. It took many years to undo the mistake and re-establish there the will of the Pan-Angle community. Through the intelligence of the South in framing legislation, and the forbearance of the North in not overriding this legislation, it is now adequately accomplished. "Hitherto, no amount of legal ingenuity has sufficed to extract from the United States supreme court a direct, straightforward decision on the constitutionality of the 'grandfather' clauses in the election laws of many states, whereby the Negro voters have been disfranchised. The court has invariably disposed of cases designed to test the constitutionality of such laws on technical grounds."[66-1] South Africa, when the subject arose in Constitutional Convention, {67} was wiser. No part overruled another part. "In respect of the admission, of natives to the parliamentary franchise the practice of the Cape Colony was in direct conflict with that of the remaining colonies. As no agreement on the question of the admission or non-admission of natives to the Union franchise could be reached, the Convention decided that the franchise qualifications existing in the several colonies should stand as the franchise qualifications for the Union Parliament in the respective provinces of the Union. As the result of this compromise, while the native voters in the Cape Province obtained the Union franchise, practically no natives were admitted to this privilege in the remaining three provinces."[67-1] With certain temporary limitations, provision is made for the elimination of the vote of the coloured inhabitants of Cape Province.[67-2] It is now generally acknowledged that no community of Pan-Angles is to be forced to accept as voters those whom it considers non-assimilable.
Our law, like our language, has flowed from many sources and has been subjected to foreign influence. The colonists carried out with them the English common law, the sources of which "have been stated to be 'as undiscoverable as those of the Nile.'"[67-3] Quite different from this is the common law of Scotland, "based on the principles {68} of the Roman Civil and Canon law as applied and modified by a long series of statutes of the Scots Parliament and decisions of the Scottish courts. . . . A detailed comparison of the differences between the private law of England and Scotland would involve a survey of the whole domain of jurisprudence and would be the work of a lifetime;"[68-1] From 1642 to 1652 occurred the English Civil War, followed by the Commonwealth. In those stormy years which seem, as writes an Australian jurist, "to have anticipated almost every effort of modern political thought, scarcely any cry was more persistently raised by the reform party than the cry for reform of the law. It was the first great period of conscious law reform."[68-2] All the Pan-Angle nations, save only the British Isles and Newfoundland, had the stress of that period reflected in the history of their settlements, or were founded after the results of that war had been produced.
In the new countries the legal influence was predominantly British, but in some parts the colonists encountered communities of Europeans of other civilizations and of other legal theories. In Quebec and Louisiana they met French law; in western United States, Spanish; and in South Africa, a form of Roman-Dutch. Being elements in civilizations which only gradually have blended into that of the Pan-Angles, these laws have in greater or less measure survived. But in such {69} localities slowly the foreign law merges into that of the local Pan-Angles. As an example we have South Africa: "The local Dutch statute law was abandoned perforce as obsolescent, and replaced almost entirely by local enactments based upon the existing circumstances of the colony or founded upon English statutes, and the Roman-Dutch common law, broadly speaking, came to be administered concurrently with English common law. Nor was it surprising that, with judges and advocates alike versed in the decisions and practice of the English Courts, English principles were more and more closely woven into the fabric of the Colonial law. And apart from the influence of the 'case-law,' thus built up through the Colonial Reports, circumstances—or rather its greater capacity to satisfy the conditions of modern life—gave the regulation of the field of commercial intercourse almost exclusively to English law."[69-1] A like story might be told of French law in Louisiana. In other instances, where perhaps it receives no official recognition, non-English law has doubtless had its effect on what may be loosely called Pan-Angle law. As long as it suits the people and their needs better, so long a law exists regardless of its origin. But experience shows that the law of any Pan-Angle nation tends to conform to the practices of our whole civilization.
Because the English common law forms so large an element, and because it has among us been modified only by English-speaking people, the Pan-Angle law, though drawn from many sources, {70} still presents a certain homogeneity. "An English barrister . . . when once he enters an American court, or begins debating legal questions with American lawyers, . . . knows that he is not abroad, but at home; he breathes again the legal atmosphere to which he is accustomed. The law of America, he finds, is the law of England carried across the Atlantic, and little changed even in form. In all legal matters it is the conservatism, not the changeableness, of Americans which astonishes an English observer. Old names and old formulas meet us in every law court. Some twenty-six years ago there were to be found in Chicago in daily use forms of pleading which had long become obsolete in England."[70-1]
It is in our common tendencies, however, that the legal attitudes of the seven nations show most striking accord. Jenks, quoted earlier, concludes that we are in favour of uniformity, simplicity, greater freedom of the individual, and more fluidity of capital and labour, so much so, that "The courts will not even enforce effectively a contract of service. To do that, it is said, would be to legalize slavery, and the fact that the slave has become such by his own act makes no difference. It is considered that the perfect spontaneity of labour is of more value than the sacredness of contract."[70-2] Further than this, actual legislation repeats itself in the many Pan-Angle law-making bodies. The British Isles, {71} Massachusetts, New Zealand, and Australia test the merits or demerits of a minimum wage law. Compulsory insurance, old age pensions, maternity benefits, and arbitration statutes spring up everywhere. In efforts to solve some problems one part of the Pan-Angles leads; in others another part. Whether this is regarded as reform or experimentation is not under present discussion. The whole Pan-Angle civilization appears headed towards what is called by some social amelioration and by others paternalism. Whatever its true name, this race progress starts from a greater recognition of the individual and hopes for his greater comfort and welfare.
Of law among the Pan-Angles it may be said that it shows plainly its relation to English common law; that it is affected by local conditions resulting from historical causes; that it exhibits certain common tendencies, and among those is a regard for the individual and a passing from the viewpoint of status to that of contract.
All this can be seen in the laws regarding marriage and divorce. These, as well as our prejudices in such matters, are still largely determined by the dead hand of the Middle Ages. But the Teutonic ideal of the equality of the marriage partnership has survived the accumulation of dogma. Our release from its grip has not depended on the divorce of an English king, nor the accompanying religious schism. There is in us that which was destined to carry us up through the pains of changing social conditions to more satisfactory relations between the husband and the wife and society.
{72}
In our efforts to attain our ideals we are using many local laws. The British Isles have three: English, Scottish, and Irish. If the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man were considered, there would be six. Besides this, members of the royal family are subject to special restrictions. Newfoundland and New Zealand have marriage laws of their own. Canada has eleven, the Union of South Africa has four, and Australia six.[72-1] In the United States there are forty-eight. This makes a total of seventy-four sets of laws in the seven self-governing nations regarding who may marry and divorce and how.
These seventy-four different sets are not, however, strange and dissimilar. As in the case of suffrage, each one has many points identical with many others, and the range of variation is small. All are monogamous; all allow freedom of choice to the marrying parties; all hold marriage and divorce to be civil matters, and consider ministers and priests of religious denominations as civil officials for the legalizing of marriages. All prohibit marriage within certain degrees of relationship, the tendency being not to include among them the relationship-by-marriage impediments surviving from medieval practice, such as the various deceased spouse's brother or sister laws. The majority allow divorce, although in some, like Newfoundland and South Carolina, marriage is by law indissoluble. The trend at present seems to be towards safe-guarding marriage, but to make easier the means of divorce. Men and women are coming more {73} nearly to an equality before the law. Such enactments as that of New South Wales permitting a husband and wife to contract financially with each other shows the trend of our beliefs in the rights of any individual to be a distinct personality.
The sacred beauty of the marriage tie no people hold higher than do the Pan-Angles. With them it is not a status imposed from without, but the voluntary union of two individuals. John Stuart Mill voiced an aspiration of the entire Pan-Angle civilization when he wrote: "What marriage may be in the case of two persons of cultivated faculties, identical in opinions and purposes, between whom there exists that best kind of equality, similarity of powers and capacities with reciprocal superiority in them—so that each can enjoy the luxury of looking up to the other, and can have alternately the pleasure of leading and of being led in the path of development—I will not attempt to describe. To those who can conceive it, there is no need; to those who cannot, it would appear the dream of an enthusiast. But I maintain, with the profoundest conviction, that this, and this only, is the ideal of marriage; . . . "[73-1]
In no sphere is the individualism of the Pan-Angle more rampant than in matters of religion. Liberty of conscience to him is as necessary as liberty of body, and he has struggled to obtain it with the same persistency.
Once the status of nationality carried with it {74} automatic inclusion in the national church. A diversity of faiths in one nation was unthinkable. Any who refused to conform, in semblance at least, were considered by the group as outsiders and enemies, to be harried and pillaged, perhaps slaughtered. Later, though leave to live was granted to those of minority creeds, they were debarred from the exercise of certain civil privileges. In the British Isles, not until 1858 were Jews able to take oaths as members of the Houses of Parliament. Still later, though all might share equally in the duties and rights of citizenship, all were compelled to contribute directly or, indirectly to the support of the state church, and, unless openly avowing otherwise, were presumed to belong to it. Some Pan-Angles still linger in this stage—those, for example, who reside in Quebec or England. This is the significance of the state church to-day.
To the majority of the Pan-Angles, however, religion is a private matter—not a public matter. In short, it is a concern in which the majority are not to interfere with the minority and in which the minority are not asked to acquiesce in the feelings of the majority. This is a condition not easily achieved. Migration from the British Isles by no means ended all contention. "Everywhere, indeed, that British settlers went this strife of sects went with them."[74-1] Six out of the seven nations were founded after our British predecessors had begun the battle for religious freedom. All six have known state churches in one form or {75} another, sometimes with attendant persecutions. To-day five thrive without state churches. Even in Quebec and England taxation for the benefit of one's neighbour's church is the only penalty against free worshipping. Elsewhere, throughout the Pan-Angle world, one may hold any creed he will, and the state does not ask him to contribute to any church, nor does the state assist, or recognize one creed above another.
In certain places, notably portions of the United States, individualism in religion goes to extremes. In 1906 there were estimated to be in that country one hundred and eighty-six different kinds of Protestant churches,[75-1] some of them approaching the bizarre in character, others so like one another that the differences which divided them were scarcely discernible. Certain denominations were known only in very circumscribed areas.[75-2] There may be a certain extravagance in maintaining the large amount of equipment necessary for so many establishments. Apart from that, however, there seems to be no objection to the multitudinousness of American faiths that is not more than balanced by the benefits to the individual from free self-expression.
"After God had carried us safe to New England, and wee had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, rear'd convenient places for {76} Gods worship, and setled the Civill Government: One of the next things we longed for, and looked after was to advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministery to the Churches, when our present Ministers shall lie in the Dust."[76-1] So runs an account of the founding of one of the Pan-Angle universities as it was written in 1643. In a near-by city a public library was later established. On the building that shelters it to-day are inscribed these sentences: "The Commonwealth requires the education of the people as the safeguard of order and liberty," and "Built by the people and dedicated to the advancement of learning." Over the door are the words: "Free to all."
Here is evidenced the attitude of one early colony toward education, and it is typical of all. Education, education free to all, education compulsory on all, is the ideal in each of the six new nations. Free instruction is in some places offered to a child from the age of three, when he enters kindergarten, to any age at which he wishes to attend the university. For certain years, very generally six to fourteen, attendance at school is compulsory. There is no discrimination in regard to sex, and the classes are frequently co-educational. Parents are in the main allowed to send children to private and church schools when these are of satisfactory excellence; though in many places no such exist, and no stigma is in any way attached to the acceptance of free education. In many places no other sort has ever been dreamed of.
The British Isles meanwhile have not been {77} insensible to the same impulses. If popular education there has seemed to lag behind that of the younger nations, it is because the British Isles had not so free a field for change. There, a more complex social structure, and a tradition that envelops every department of life, interfere with the movement that would cast aside the old and adopt the new. Reforms must go slowly under such conditions, but the opportunity for education for all is there now an accomplished fact. In 1832 began the history of state education in the British Isles.[77-1] To-day elementary education is compulsory between the ages of five and fourteen,[77-2] and free, if one desires to take it so. Since 1902 public grants to secondary schools have opened their doors to certain numbers of non-paying pupils. The differences between the educational systems of the British Isles and those of the other English-speaking nations can now be said to be differences of method or degree only, but not of spirit.
Throughout our civilization, education opens the way to achievement, "the only real patent of nobility in the modern world."[77-3] The success or failure of the group is known to depend on the individual. He holds the ballot, makes the laws, enforces them; his religion is part of the faith of the land and determines the character of its composite; his ideals of marriage are expressed in the practice of the race. Organization and a few picked men do not control our destinies. To {78} ensure the future of the group we educate our citizens. We "advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity" so that wisdom may be heard in our councils, and that ballots may register considered judgments.
As individualists the Pan-Angles have come to their present state. As individualists they must continue to work out their destiny. The right they prize most is the right to develop further in individualism. That right will be secured to Pan-Angles only when they have cause to fear no human power.
[48-1] Modern England, 50,916 square miles, and all Pan Angle nations and their dependencies, 16,897,126. See post, p. 81, note 1.
[48-2] Round Table, London, February 1911, p. 207: "1817, 1823, 1825, 1828, 1832, 1835, 1836."
[48-3] A. W. Jose, History of Australasia, Sydney, 1911, p. 187.
[49-1] Cf. Ency. Brit., vol. xxvi. pp. 692-693, on the story of Texas.
[49-2] For an account of which, see Beckles Willson, The Great Company (1667-1871), London, 1900.
[50-1] The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Cleveland, Ohio, September 2, 1913; but cf. United Empire, London, December 1913, p. 934 concerning a statue to his memory at Berbera.
[50-2] Ency. Brit., vol. ix. p. 556.
[50-3] Ibid., vol. iv. p. 660.
[51-1] Pierre Leroy-Beaulieu, Les Etats-Unis au VingtiÈme SiÈcle, Paris, 1904, pp. 37, 38, claims that the country to the south of the long Canadian frontier was opened up by successive waves of people of the same blood, the pioneers being almost entirely sons of pioneers.
[51-2] Ency. Brit., vol. xxvii. p. 691: "The new life bore most hardly upon women; and, if the record of woman's share in the work of American colonization could be fully made up, the price paid for the final success would seem enormous."
[51-3] W. M. West, Modern History, Boston, rev. ed., 1907, p. 300.
[52-1] C.A.W. Pownall, Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, pp. 400-401. Cf. Edmund Burke in Conciliation with America, par. 37.
[52-2] Yearbook of the Commonwealth of Australia, Melbourne, No. 4, 1911, p.122.
[53-1] J. E. Le Rossignol and W. D. Stewart, State Socialism in New Zealand, London [1911], p. 17: "The people of New Zealand are not doctrinaires, and the academic question as to the proper spheres of governmental and individual activity is seldom discussed. The State has taken up one thing after another as the result of concrete discussion of concrete cases. Usually, if not invariably, abuses have been thought to exist, which the State has been called upon to remedy: the great landowners have stood in the way of closer settlement: wages have been low and conditions of labour bad: rates of interest, insurance premiums, prices of coal, and rents of dwellings have been thought to be high: the oyster beds have been depleted by private exploitation: taxation has fallen too heavily upon the poor: for one cause or another there has been complaint, complaint has grown into agitation, and agitation into legislation."
[55-1] Arthur Murphy, The Works of Cornelius Tacitus, London, 1793, vol. iv. p. 16.
[56-1] Ency. Brit., vol. xxiii. p. 110.
[56-2] Ibid., vol. xx. p. 837: "The Angles, Saxons and other Teutonic races who conquered Britain brought to their new homes their own laws and customs, . . . and a certain rude representation in local affairs:' Cf. also Woodrow Wilson, The State, 1898, Boston, rev. ed., 1911, pp. 560, 561.
[56-3] Ency. Brit., vol. ix. p. 491.
[57-1] Ency. Brit., vol. xxiii. p. 109.
[57-2] Ibid., vol. xxiii. pp. 109-110.
[57-3] Ibid., vol. xxiii. p. 110.
[57-4] Ibid., vol. xxiii. p. 109: "In 1651 Isaac Penington the younger published a pamphlet entitled 'The fundamental right, safety and liberty of the People; which is radically in themselves, derivatively in the Parliament, their substitutes or representatives.'" Cf. New English Dictionary, Oxford, 1891, "Representative," where 1658 is mentioned as its first use.
[57-5] Ency. Brit., vol. xx. p. 835, and vol. ix. p. 491.
[57-6] The House of Lords contains a certain representative element in the Irish and Scottish members. These are some only of the peers of their respective countries, and are elected by their fellow peers to seats in the House of Lords—those from Ireland for life, and from Scotland for a session.
[58-1] Ency. Brit., vol. xii. p. 295.
[58-2] Ibid., p. 295.
[58-3] Ibid., vol. xxiii. p. 112.
[58-4] Ibid., vol. xxiii. p. 112.
[59-1] Alfred Caldecott, English Colonization and Empire, London, 1891, p. 129.
[59-2] Cf. ante, p. 56.
[60-1] Cf. post, p. 109, note 1.
[60-2] The variety of uses of the word "constitution" is referred to, post, pp. 95-108.
[60-3] Cf. W.H. Taft, Popular Government, New Haven, Connecticut, 1913, pp. 42-95, for a discussion of these three terms.
[61-1] C.A.W. Pownall, Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, pp. 207-208.
[62-1] Recourse to the grave process of impeachment lies outside normal procedure and is here disregarded.
[62-2] Cf. post, p. 113 et seq.
[63-1] Ency. Brit., vol. xvii. pp. 315, 317; but also cf. ibid., vol. ix. p. 488: "It was the first of the many occasions in English history when the demand for reform took the shape of a reference back to old precedents, and now (as on all subsequent occasions) the party which opposed the crown read back into the ancient grants which they quoted a good deal more than had been actually conceded in them."
[65-1] W.H. Taft, Popular Government, New Haven, Connecticut, 1913, p. 155.
[65-2] The exception to this statement is apparent in the British Isles, where suffrage is a national affair, and no federal framework affords a basis for local option on this privilege.
[66-1] Springfield (Massachusetts) Weekly Republican, November 20, 1913.
[67-1] W. B. Worsfold, The Union of South Africa, London, 1912, p. 126.
[67-2] Ibid., pp. 139-140.
[67-3] An Analysis of the System of Government throughout the British Empire, London, 1912, p. 44.
[68-1] An Analysis of the System of Government throughout the British Empire, London, 1912, pp. 44-45.
[68-2] Edward Jenks, The Future of British Law: An Inaugural Lecture delivered before the University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 1889, pp. 6-7.
[69-1] W.B. Worsfold, The Union of South Africa, London, 1912, p.438.
[70-1] A. V. Dicey, "A Common Citizenship for the English Race," in Contemporary Review, vol. lxxi., April 1897, p. 469.
[70-2] Edward Jenks, The Future of British Law: An Inaugural Lecture delivered before the University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 1889, p. 11.
[72-1] Eversley and Craies, Marriage Laws of the British Empire, London, 1910, pp. 61, 173, 192, 70, 239-392.
[73-1] John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women, London, 1906, p. 123.
[74-1] United Empire, London, January 1914, A. W. Tilby, "Christianity and the Empire," p. 57.
[75-1] Ency. Brit., vol. xxvii. p. 638.
[75-2] U.S. Bureau of the Census, Special Reports of the Census: Religious Bodies: 1906, Washington, D.C., 1910, pt. ii., pp. 225, 508, 626, 635, 659.
[76-1] New England's First Fruits, London, 1643, p.12.
"THE representatives of the great nations across the seas."
A British Colonial Secretary used these words[79-1] in a speech welcoming to the Imperial Conference of 1902 the Prime Ministers of the other Britannic governments. This should be enough to permit the terminology to any Pan-Angle, when he refers to New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Newfoundland or Canada, and the men who govern them. These "great nations across the seas" are themselves conscious of nationhood on a parity with that of the British Isles. A representative of one of them in the same year thus spoke of his country and its fellow nations: "The British Empire . . . a galaxy of independent nations . . . There is not in Canada at the present moment a single British soldier to maintain British supremacy—moreover it is Canadian soldiers who are today garrisoning Halifax . . . The whole Australian continent {80} has now been moulded into another nation under the flag . . . and I can see dawning in South Africa the day when there will be another Confederation . . . "[80-1] Eleven years later in that South Africa another national Prime Minister spoke of his country and his countrymen. "Their country was part of the British Empire. They could not get away from it; it was their Constitution; and yet they were as free as if they were their own State, and they took up the position—he had said so in England—that they were not a subject State, but part of the British Empire, and were on an equality. They were a sister State of England."[80-2]
When throughout these lands writers similarly use the word "nation," the student of Pan-Angle affairs need proceed to no further investigation, though he may be unable to justify the word by current dictionary definition. Enough if he notes its political significance. In the same class are such words as "independent," "self-governing," and "autonomous": subject to the same theoretical queries but established by the same practical usage. Anyone who would question such usage is silenced by the recognition that it only conforms to facts. On such facts is based the thesis of these pages.
The seven units of the Pan-Angle world differ {81} both in size and density of population,[81-1] Hence it might be objected that to classify according to these divisions is to neglect the relative strength and importance of the various political groups, Newfoundland is not as important in population or wealth as the British Isles; while near Canada, it cannot be considered a part of Canada, New Zealand is two-thirds as far from Australia as Newfoundland is from Scotland, and emphatically is no part of its huge neighbour,[81-2] One of its citizens writes: "Although one thousand miles distant from Australia at the nearest point, although situated in a different climate and inevitably destined to display a different national temperament, although already possessed of a national {82} character, national aspirations and national peculiarities, although already served by Imperial affiliation much better than it could be served by any mere local federation, the Australian Prime Minister has no deeper insight than to predict the sinking of New Zealand into the status of a petty and subordinate Australian State. . . . before New Zealand denies its independence under the Empire, and seeks shelter under the mantle of the [Australian] Federal Parliament, there will be a new political heaven and a new political earth. At the present time the proposal is simply absurd." [82-1]
Some might prefer to treat the Pan-Angle world as made up of two groups, those under the British and American flags respectively. This, however, fails to give the true character of the five younger Britannic nations, and might suggest erroneously that they bear a position to the British Parliament similar to the position of the American states to the Congress of the United States. Some American may resent the implied insignificance of the forty-eight states, some of which are larger in size or population, or both, than certain of the Britannic nations. Texas is over twice as large as either the British Isles or New Zealand, and has a population about four times that of New Zealand, or somewhat less than that of Australia. Similarly, it may occur to an Australian, or a Canadian, or a South African, that the states of the first, or the provinces of the two latter nations should receive more prominence. Others again might consider that the yet undivided areas of the British Isles, which may some time be {83} organized under a federal system, or else the ancient historical parts as they were before the days of union, should be among the basic units of this discussion.
To all these questionings the same answer applies. It is not easy to generalize in a system which, like ours, is the result of growth and adaptation. There are many local peculiarities of governments and grades of autonomy which, significant in themselves, are immaterial to the question of Pan-Angle federation, and which for simplicity's sake are here ignored. The classification here used does not forbid others. Each reader may consider these people according to any scheme of which he approves. The seven nations here designated are entities. Their pride of personality is in most cases very great. This is reason enough, in spite of huge discrepancies in size and population, for utilizing a classification based on existing national feelings.
The British Isles[83-1] and the United States[83-2] are {84} entirely independent of each other and of all other powers. Neither recognizes the right of anyone to dictate to it in any matter, except by war or its threat. The other five of the Pan-Angle nations do not yet perhaps go so far.
In the past certainly the British government legislated for them as it saw fit. The abolition of slavery under the British flag early in the nineteenth century serves as an example. This outside interference while humane was even then considered arbitrary.
In South Africa "what mainly angered the Cape colonists was the inadequacy of the compensation which was awarded in their case. The value of the slaves on Dec. 1, 1834, when the Emancipation Act came into effect, was estimated by the commissioners specially appointed for the purpose at three million sterling. The sum allotted by the Imperial Government was no more than one and a quarter million, payable, not in South Africa, but in London, and with a deduction of any expenses incurred in carrying out the work of emancipation. The result was to impoverish the former slave owners, and to awaken in them a bitter feeling of resentment against the government which had deprived them of their property, and against the philanthropists by whom the policy of emancipation had been inspired."[84-1] This step had been taken without the consent of the governed, {85} the slave-holding communities having no representation in the Parliament that enacted the law.
Theoretically the same right exists to-day.[85-1] "In granting self-government to the British Dominions Britain did not change her constitution. Conscious that the British Government could not rule great communities in America, Australasia, and Africa, . . . Britain has agreed that they shall manage their own affairs. But she has never undertaken, and could not undertake, a clear division of functions, nor could she in theory explicitly divest herself of final responsibility in any sphere of government. The British North America Act is a constitution by which the relations of the Federal Government of Canada with the Provincial Governments are fully regulated and defined; but it is not a constitution by which the relations of that Federal Government with the Imperial Government are fully regulated or defined. . . . Any constitutional powers vested in the English Government before the grant of self-government to the Dominions are in theory still vested in that Government today."[85-2]
In practice this theoretical right has yielded to the stronger claim of self-government. "My vindication of the preference policy was given not at Ottawa or on Canadian soil, but in the heart of the Empire at London, at the Colonial Conference, when I declared to the Empire that {86} I and my colleagues of the Government were ready to make a trade treaty. We said, 'we are ready to discuss with you articles on which we can give you a preference, and articles on which you can give us a preference. We are ready to make with you a treaty of trade.' Mark those words coming from a colony to the mother country without offence being given or taken."[86-1] "What has never been questioned since the War of Independence is that a democracy pretending to a sovereignty over other democracies is either a phantom or the most intolerable of all oppressions."[86-2] "Nobody dreams in these days of the British Parliament making laws for Canada or Australia. Such an idea is alien to all thinking men, . . . [86-3]
In sum, the government of the British Isles no longer dictates to the "great nations across the seas." All that is now apparent of its former right of interference consists of appeals from the courts of these younger nations to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council of the British Isles, and the seldom used veto power of the governors sent out from the British Isles to these younger nations. The appeal power, though of great theoretical importance, is of such limited practical use that a British writer has overlooked its existence in the following description: The {87} Governor is the only link between the Home Government and the Colonial, and in all of them his powers are limited to the exercise of the veto. Even this is circumscribed. It is tacitly understood that the veto will be resorted to only when the foreign relations of the empire are affected, or when some Act is passed which the Secretary of State decides to be incompatible with existent Imperial legislation."[87-1]
In place of the former parental-filial attitude between the British Isles and the five younger nations there is growing up a sympathetic and sentimental friendship. The younger nations as yet have no representatives chosen by their voters to sit in a common legislature with Britishers, but claim, nevertheless, to act with the British Isles as equal partners in the Britannic world. This claim is acknowledged by the British Isles government. In the words of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain at Glasgow, October 6, 1903: "And when I speak of our colonies, it is an expression; they are not ours—they are not ours in a possessory sense. They are sister States, able to treat with us from an equal position, able to hold to us, willing to hold to us, but also able to break with us."[87-2]
In the light of the foregoing testimony, the exact political status of New Zealand, Australia, Newfoundland, Canada, and South Africa becomes increasingly difficult to define. It seems, on the whole, more nearly accurate to regard them as {88} independent and autonomous with certain limitations, than to consider them as dependent with excessive liberties. Accordingly, each of the seven Pan-Angle nations is here considered to be the equal of each of the other six.
The collective Britannic nations have often been styled Greater Britain, or the Britannic Empire. The word empire, though constantly used for lack of a better term, is a misnomer. As Seeley says: "Greater Britain is not in the ordinary sense an Empire at all."[88-1] Another authority says: "The British Empire is not an Empire in the ordinary meaning of the word. It is a system of government."[88-2] "There is no Imperial Government."[88-3]
Men speak of an Imperial Parliament, but in reality no such thing exists. It is an ambitious name applied sometimes to the Parliament of the British Isles which has no members from the other nations, and whose power to enforce its legislation in the other Britannic nations is denied. "By a fine tradition it has the full dignity of sovereignty; but in reality it is as impotent as the Continental Congress, and only less ridiculous because it has learned from experience the timid wisdom not to court rebuffs."[88-4]
Downing Street is often referred to. Downing Street is a term used to sum up the six administrative departments of the British Isles government: the Foreign Office, the Colonial Office, the India Office, {89} the Admiralty, the War Office, and the Board of Trade. Of these the India Office, does not enter into the matters here discussed, and the Colonial Office "in its present relations with the Dominions, . . . is in reality little more than a clearing house of information and correspondence."[89-1] The remaining four, i.e. the Foreign Office, the Admiralty, the War Office, and the Board of Trade have their normal administrative functions in the government of the British Isles. They are filled by the ministry of the day, and hence are responsible to the majority of the House of Commons and ultimately to the British people. They are in no way representative of, nor responsible to, the other five self-governing nations. Through the theoretical veto of the governors sent out from the British Isles, Downing Street is supposed to wield its power and to prevent legislation in the five younger nations that in matters touching foreign affairs is contrary to the will of the British Parliament. As a matter of fact, this veto is rarely exercised. Its exercise would be, "in plain words, the tyranny of one Parliament over another—of one democracy over another."[89-2] "The theory of the British Constitution is, as it stands, clearly intolerable except in disuse. The powers which are imagined to exist in it would never stand the strain of being put in force."[89-2] What does happen when a veto appears called for by Britannic safety is that the Parliament of the younger nation is induced to reconsider matters in the light of whatever {90} argument Downing Street has at hand. Here, obviously, are not officials who as executives and legislators are part of any common government. They are part of only one government, viz. that of the British Isles. Certain matters in government must proceed from a single source. In the United States the federal government, which represents all the people and each state, has this in its charge and has machinery by which to enforce its power. Among the Britannic nations, the government of one of them controls these matters with no other machinery than persuasion to enforce its often debated authority.
A member of the British Ministry of 1913 is quoted as saying that "the only political organisations common to the whole Empire, . . . are the Crown, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and the Committee of Imperial Defence, but not one of them has any executive or legislative power."[90-1] By "the Crown" is meant the power of Downing Street just discussed. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council of the British Isles is the supreme appellate court for courts under the British flag outside the British Isles. A like function is performed for British Isles courts by the House of Lords. There is no single court of appeal for the six Britannic nations.[90-2] Consequently, the Judicial {91} Committee of the Privy Council can hardly be called an institution common to all these nations, even were its activity not so limited as to be negligible. As to the Committee of Imperial Defence, in it "the Dominion representatives are guests and not constituents."[91-1]
All this is to say that through certain makeshifts and survivals, whose forms and functions are nowhere clearly defined, the governments of the six Britannic nations come in occasional contact with each other.
Such is the complexity of the English-speaking world control, and such is its lack of uniformity of classification and naming, that it is not safe to say the five new nations and the British Isles and the United States are the only English-speaking autonomous groups. "The British Empire exhibits forms and methods of Government in almost exuberant variety." [91-2] For example, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands and such outposts of Pan-Angle civilization as Pitcairn and Tristan da Cunha might well be considered self-governing. These areas are omitted from enumeration in this discussion, not by reason of any lack of appreciation of their worth, but because the inclusion of these many assets and liabilities of the Pan-Angle concern would unduly expand this discussion. These groups have their respective positions with the several Pan-Angle nations to which they are to a greater or less degree connected. On the continued career of the seven Pan-Angle nations {92} depend the political existences of a multitude of these smaller Pan-Angle localities.
Moreover, no direct discussion of the politics of any of the many dependencies is here made. Their needs are not for their own solving. Our control we try to make materially beneficial to their inhabitants by "giving them only what is good for them, not always what they want."[92-1] Our control of ourselves is based on the entirely opposite theorem of taking what we want, not necessarily what someone else thinks is good for us. In short, we govern our dependencies in one way, ourselves in quite another. The dependent countries which "belong to" the several nations may present many problems to the Pan-Angles, but these form no "part of" the Pan-Angle problem. This is no place to question whether Seeley was justified in his doubt as to the value of India to the British Isles.[92-2] Enough here to acknowledge that our present economic policy leads many of our seven nations to believe that the holding of dependencies, especially in the tropics, is of value. To enumerate all these dependencies would be tedious and needless. It is only to distinguish the dependent from the independent that space is here given to the subject.
A united government over and between these seven Pan-Angle nations would be unaffected by the existence of these possessions. At the present {93} time New Zealand and Australia hold dependencies. This in no way interferes with their being somehow, as they believe, parts of a political entity with the British Isles. Similarly, in case of the uniting of the seven Pan-Angle nations, New Zealand and Australia could each retain its dependencies, and the United States could retain its dependencies, without impairing the success of a Pan-Angle government. The history of our civilization shows that such a complicated procedure is the way of natural growth among Pan-Angle peoples.
"Empire," from its long association with states builded of conquered peoples, is no fit word to use for a voluntary combination of Pan-Angles. Nor would any form of government be acceptable that blotted out the individuality that each of the seven nations has established. They are members of a great civilization, each to-day practically self-supreme. Whatever arrangement they may choose to enter upon to protect themselves and their civilization, they will wish to continue always nations.
[79-1] Richard Jebb, Studies in Colonial Nationalism, London, 1905, p. 187.
[80-1] Sir Wilfrid Laurier at the Dominion Day Banquet, 1902; quoted Richard Jebb, Studies in Colonial Nationalism, London, 1905, p. 1.
[80-2] General Botha at South African Nationalist Congress, November 24, 1913; quoted in The Times Weekly Edition, London, November 28, 1913.
[81-1] Area in Per cent White Per cent sq. miles of total population of total area 1911 population New Zealand 103,658 .92 1,008,468 .71 Australia 2,974,581 26.59 4,455,005 3.15 South Africa 473,954 4.23 1,276,242 .81 Newfoundland 162,750 1.45 242,966 .17 Canada 3,729,665 33.34 7,204,838 5.10 British Isles 121,089 1.08 45,211,888 32.03 United States 3,617,949 32.35 81,735,623 57.91 Total 11,183,646 141,135,030
In comparison with the above figures, England contains 50,890 square miles and 34,045,290 population. United States and South Africa contain 9,828,294 and 4,697,152 respectively of negroes, which together with other non-whites are excluded from the figures in the above table, These figures are based on Whitaker's Almanack, London, 1913, pp. 584, 603, 660-667; and Britannica Year Book, London, 1913, pp. 680, 682,663, 678,699, 703, 714, 557.
[81-2] Auckland to Sydney, 1264; Wellington to Sydney, 1233; Bluff to Hobart, 940; and St. John's to Glasgow, 1859 miles.
[82-1] Round Table, London, September 1912, p. 753, quoting New Zealand Herald, Auckland.
[83-1] The British Isles is here used in preference to United Kingdom. None of the other Pan-Angle nations are "kingdoms "; and the term is applicable only historically to that democratic group of people of which England contains the largest portion. For a modern Pan-Angle attitude, see W. H. Moore, The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, 2nd ed., Melbourne, 1910, p. 66, where he says concerning the naming of a nation: '"Kingdom of Australia' would be acceptable to none."
[83-2] Ency. Brit., vol. xxvii. p. 612: "The United States, the short title usually given to the great federal republic which had its origin in the revolt of the British colonies in North America, when, in the Declaration of Independence, they described themselves as 'The Thirteen United States of America.' Officially the name is 'The United States of America,' but 'The United States' (used as a singular and not as a plural) has become accepted as the name of the country; and pre-eminent usage has now made its citizens 'Americans,' in distinction from the other inhabitants of North and South America."
[84-1] C.P. Lucas, Historical Geography of the British Colonies, vol. iv., South Africa, Oxford, 1913, pt. i., pp. 146-147.
[85-1] An Analysis of the System of Government throughout the British Empire, London, 1912, p. 58: "It should be remembered that in theory there is nothing to prevent the Parliament of the United Kingdom legislating for the internal affairs of a self-governing colony or even imposing taxation on such a colony."
[85-2] Round Table, London, September 1913, pp. 588-589.
[86-1] Sir Wilfrid Laurier at Sorel, September 28, 1904, quoted in Richard Jebb, Studies in Colonial Nationalism, London, 1905, p.151.
[86-2] F. S. Oliver, Alexander Hamilton: An Essay on American Union, London, 1906, p. 448.
[86-3] Lord Milner, November 3, 1908, at Canadian Club, Montreal, in Lord Milner, The Nation and the Empire, London, 1913, p. 362.
[87-1] Alfred Caldecott, English Colonization and Empire, London, 1891, p. 134.
[87-2] Richard Jebb, Studies in Colonial Nationalism, London, 1905, p.272.
[88-1] J.R. Seeley, The Expansion of England, London, 1883, p.296.
[88-2] Round Table, London, May 1911, p. 232.
[88-3] Ibid., February 1911, p. 167.
[88-4] F. S. Oliver, Alexander Hamilton: An Essay on American Union, London, 1906, p. 449.
[89-1] Round Table, London, September 1913, p. 590.
[89-2] F. S. Oliver, Alexander Hamilton: An Essay on American Union, London, 1906, p. 449.
[90-1] United Empire, London, January 1914, p. 1.
[90-2] United Empire, London, October 1913, p.767: ". . . there is no ultimate court of appeal for the Empire as a whole. A proposal to create one, by fusing the judicial functions of the House of Lords, which hears United Kingdom appeals, and the Privy Council, which hears appeals from oversea, has long been favoured by Australian statesmen." Cf. The Times Weekly Edition, London, August 22, 1913, "An Imperial Court of Appeals."
[91-1] United Empire, London, January 1914, p. 1.
[91-2] Alfred Caldecott, English Colonization and Empire, London, 1891, p. 121.
[92-1] W. C. Forbes, lately Civil Governor of the Philippine Islands, Address concerning the Philippines, before Boston City Club, November 20, 1913, quoted in Boston City Club Bulletin, Boston, January 1, 1914, p. 40.
[92-2] J.R. Seeley, The Expansion of England, London, 1883, p. 11.
{94}
V
GOVERNMENTAL PRACTICES
THE seven Pan-Angle nations are similar in their forms of government. This similarity is often obvious, but even where differences of procedure seem to exist the foundations of government are still the same.
In each of the nations the people rule. In each they follow in governing three practices: ultimate control on all questions is in the voters; immediate legislative control is in legislatures composed of representatives who act on behalf of the voters, and subject to restrictions, if any, by the voters only; and executive or administrative control is in charge of elected persons. If "a country where a large portion of the people has some considerable share in the supreme power would be a constitutional country,"[94-1] then these seven nations are more than constitutional countries, for in them the people not only have "some considerable share," but are the final judges on any matters which they desire to adjudicate. As such these nations meet Burke's definition of a free government: "If any man asks me what a free government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think {95} so,—and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of the matter."[95-1]
Ultimate control in all these nations is secured to the voters by elections and referenda. By these two means the voters choose their representatives and sometimes actively participate in legislation. Often, too, they state the forms under which their representatives shall work and limit the work they shall be allowed to perform. In the British Isles there is no formal limitation on the power of the representatives elected to the House of Commons. In the other six nations the elected representatives are empowered to act only in certain fields. Their power is conveyed to them through written instruments or constitutions which are beyond their control. All power in either case lies ultimately in the voters, whether through the ballot and their ability to defeat at the polls alone, or through this plus a written constitution. Accordingly, as already stated, all seven of our nations have constitutional governments. Outside the British Isles they are, in a sense, doubly constitutional, because not only is this power of election in the voters, but the framework, or written constitution, of each government under which the representatives must act is likewise in the control of the voters.
The word constitution[95-2] is variously used in Pan-Angle {96} parlance, and it may be well here to discuss some of its meanings.
The Constitution of the British Isles consists partly of laws, determining the form of government, which have been passed at various times and are still in force. To this extent it is written. The bulk of the Constitution, however, lies in a mass of tradition, and depends for its force upon the respect in which Parliament holds that tradition. For this reason the British Constitution is frequently called "unwritten." "In one important respect England differs conspicuously from most other countries. Her constitution is to a large extent unwritten, using the word in much the same sense as when we speak of unwritten law. Its rules can be found in no written document, but depend, as so much of English law does, on precedent modified by a constant process of interpretation {97}. Many rules of the constitution have in fact a purely legal history, that is to say, they have been developed by the law courts, as part of the general body of the common law. Others have in a similar way been developed by the practice of parliament. Both Houses, in fact, have exhibited the same spirit of adherence to precedent, coupled with a power of modifying precedent to suit circumstances, which distinguishes the judicial tribunals. In a constitutional crisis the House of Commons appoints a committee to 'search its journals for precedents,' just as the court of king's bench would examine the records of its own decisions. And just as the law, while professing to remain the same, is in process of constant change, so, too, the unwritten constitution is, without any acknowledgment of the fact, constantly taking up new ground."[97-1] "'Constitutional law,' as the expression is used in England, both by the public and by authoritative writers, consists of two elements. The one element, which I have called the 'law of the constitution' is a body of undoubted law; the other element, which I have called the 'conventions of the constitution,' consists of maxims and practices which, though they regulate the ordinary conduct of the Crown and of Ministers and of others under the constitution, are not in strictness laws at all."[97-2] It must be borne in mind that Parliament, and Parliament alone, can change these laws of the Constitution, and that the change can occur whenever a majority of Parliament so decides. {98} What these traditions are changes from year to year and even from day to day—in fact, it is difficult to find two Britishers who will agree on what is the Constitution at a given date, so greatly are these traditions a matter of personal, not national, conviction.
In each of the other Pan-Angle countries the Constitution consists of laws and traditions similar to those in the British Isles, plus a written document (or documents) which is a power of attorney limiting in certain ways the power of the national representatives-be they executive, judicial, or legislative. These written documents are either enactments of the Parliament of the British Isles, or successors to such enactments. The Canadian Constitution was drafted in London by delegates from the Canadian colonies and various British officials,[98-1] and was passed by the British Isles Parliament, March 29, 1867, to take effect July 1. It was never submitted to the people,[98-2] although it was pleaded that the general election which ensued was "virtual ratification." The Australian Constitution, drafted by Australians in a national constitutional convention, ratified by referenda in each colony,[98-3] now to become a "state," was altered by the British Isles Parliament only in reference to the clause which prohibited appeals to the King in Council, and was passed by that Parliament July 9, 1900, to take effect January 1, 1901. The South {99} African Constitution was drafted in South Africa by South Africans in a national constitutional convention, ratified by the legislatures in three of the South African provinces, and in Natal by a referendum of the voters, was altered by the British Isles Parliament only in reference to matters affecting "natives" and "Asiatics," and was passed by that Parliament September 20, 1909, to take effect May 31,1910.[99-1] The Constitutions of New Zealand and Newfoundland are to be found in the charters and enactments framed in London for their government, and are historically similar in composition to the constitutions of the thirteen American colonies. The American Constitution was based on the previous experience of the race, especially as acquired under various colonial charters. It was drafted at a national convention, and was subsequently ratified by state representative conventions successively. The work of the National Convention "was a work of selection, not a work of creation, . . . the success of their work was not a success of invention, always most dangerous in government, but a success of judgment, of selective wisdom, of practical sagacity,—the only sort of success in politics which can ever be made permanent."[99-2] The American people changed governmental responsibility from the British Isles to themselves, but did not and could not change the source of their ideas.
Such written documents are so often referred to as "The Constitution" that citizens of some of the {100} six younger nations often assume that "The Constitution" is the whole Constitution of their respective governments. The first such written power of attorney to the legislators, and as such an expression of the views then held by a certain body politic, was signed aboard the Mayflower in 1620.[100-1] This Constitution by which the forty-one signers "solemnly and mutually . . . covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute and frame-[laws]—unto which we promise all due submission and obedience,"[100-2] did not, however, supersede all other, including unwritten, governmental traditions of that body politic. Constitutions written later have similarly left for their respective groups much continuing tradition, that has been respected and has been enlarged upon. We have written down that which we felt strongly about, but we have also continued other customs. Written "constitutions" have been expressions of public belief as to the form of framework of any given body politic, but for interpretation they have had to rely on unwritten or previously written tradition, as developed to meet arising needs. The mere writing has not arrested our constitutional growth nor rendered inflexible our governmental forms.
The American Constitution consists really of {101} two portions, the written and the unwritten. The tenacity with which the nation clings to certain traditions never put in writing or even at variance with the spirit of the writing, makes it advisable, if not absolutely necessary, so to consider it. Lord Bryce, familiar with the nature of the British Constitution, calls the usages that have grown up apart from the written Constitution "parts of the actual or (so to speak) 'working' Constitution"[101-1] of America. As illustrative of the latter he mentions certain American customs: "The president practically is limited to two continuous terms of office. The presidential electors are expected to vote for the candidate of the party which has chosen them, exercising no free will of their own. The Senate always confirms the nominations to a cabinet office made by the President."[101-2] These instances, of what he calls the American working Constitution, are supported by the same force that maintains the entire British Constitution—public opinion.
To the Britisher, this point of view is thoroughly natural. He has at home a Constitution which is also compounded of written and unwritten parts. To the American this phraseology may sound strange, for he has long been accustomed to think the "Constitution" refers to a particular written document and the judicial decisions thereunder. For the unwritten or working basis of his government he has had no word.
The real difference in the two Constitutions must be sought in the amending power. To the amending of the unwritten portions of either there is no check on Parliament or on Congress, other than public {102} opinion. To the amending of the written portion of the British Constitution, there is likewise no check other than public opinion. Parliament amends the written and unwritten portions of the Constitution,—at the will of a majority of the House of Commons. Congress cannot so amend the written portions of the American Constitution; that is a prerogative of the voters alone. Therein lies the mystery of the alleged respective "flexity" and "rigidity" of the two. But the mystery is less, and the distinctions of flexity and rigidity grow of uncertain value when it is realized that both Constitutions are being constantly changed by the genius of our race. As in the case of our laws, our Constitutions are being steadily interpreted in accord with the will of the voters. That we do not change more suddenly is due to the conservative, yet discreet, action of our representatives, sanctioned by the voters.
An enactment of Parliament at variance with the British Constitution changes that Constitution. An enactment of Congress at variance with the written portion of the American Constitution does not change the Constitution but remains at variance with it. To uphold the written Constitution in such a case and to insist on the priority of its terms over the acts performed by representatives acting under it, early became the self-imposed duty of the American courts. "But this, although, as we may well think, a sound conclusion, was not a necessary one; and it was long denied by able statesmen, judges, and lawyers."[102-1] This function of the courts was for years a unique feature of the United {103} States government. "The right to deal thus with their legislatures had already been asserted in the States, and once or twice it had really been exercised. Had the question related to a conflict, between that [federal written] Constitution and the enactment of a State, it would have been a simpler matter. These two questions, under European written constitutions, are regarded as different ones. It is almost necessary to the working of a federal system that the general government, and each of its departments, should be free to disregard acts of any departments of the local states which may be inconsistent with the federal constitution. And so in Switzerland and Germany the federal courts thus treat local enactments. But there is not under any written constitution in Europe a country where a court deals in this way with the acts of its coÖrdinate legislature."[103-1]
Because the power to amend the written Constitution is not in Congress, it has come about that courts see to it that the will of the popular power so expressed shall not be ignored or vitiated by those who are the servants of that popular power. Because the power to amend the written portions of the British Constitution is in Parliament, there can be no clash between the wishes of Parliament and its Constitution. What Parliament does is the final test of what the Constitution is.
From the different powers of Parliament and Congress in regard to their respective national Constitutions comes the ambiguity of Pan-Angle usage of the word "unconstitutional."
In the British Isles "unconstitutional" referring {104} to parliamentary action means that someone considers it not consistent with established British political customs. Yet, if the British Parliament enacts any legislation it must be constitutional, because the legislation by its mere enactment is proved not inconsistent with the views of the temporary majority in Parliament. Various British kings have been elected by the Witan and by Parliament; one king was beheaded by the same popular authority; at various dates the duties of kingship have been altered. All these acts were constitutional the day they were voted. It was therefore correct to say in 1910 that the British Constitution "can be torn up by the mere vote of a temporary majority in the two houses of Parliament."[104-1] Since 1911 it would be equally correct to say that such power is now in one House—the House of Commons. It is evident that, "This arrangement, while it makes for flexibility, may be a source of grave danger in the hands of an unscrupulous majority."[104-2]
That forces other than parliamentary majorities may come to exercise more direct control over the British Constitution is not impossible. In the excitement of discussing the place of the House of Lords in the government of the British Isles, the party leaders in 1910, after the death of Edward VII., held a conference. Although they failed to find a consensus of opinion on the best framework for the British Isles government, "The significance of the Conference lies in the precedent it creates for the alteration of the national {105} constitution by the expedient of conference and compromise, instead of by the steam-rolling of a party machine."[105-1] Concerning this same conference another writer observes, "whether in itself it be a development of our Constitution, as some people affirm, or an encroachment on our Constitution, which is the complaint of others, it has at any rate affected our Constitution very materially, simply by its existence."[105-2] If such a conference after deliberating were to lay its conclusions before the people for ratification, it would be analogous to the national constitutional conventions which since the early American experiments have been familiar to the Pan-Angle world. From this the British Isles might come to have a "written constitution" in the same sense that the Constitutions of the United States, Canada, and Australia are written.
For the present, the plan of parliamentary government control which is the British Constitution while successful is, as the above quotations evidence, hazy. And in the British Isles it is fair to consider that "unconstitutional" means "unusual."[105-3]
With Americans the word "unconstitutional" never in popular practice has the comprehensive and indefinite British meaning. As Americans have no term in common use to denote the unwritten part of their Constitution, so they have none at all with which to refer to an infraction of it. The {106} expression has yet to be coined for the American public to employ should the Electoral College act as it did in Washington's day, viz. each elector exercise his individual discretion in voting for a president, or should a president be elected for a third term, whether or not consecutive. In either of these instances the change could not be unconstitutional in the American sense, though it would be unconstitutional in the British sense. In the former case, the procedure would be a return to what was once entirely usual in the American practice, and called for by the one-time working interpretation of the written Constitution. In the latter case, it would be a change to what has never been forbidden by the American written Constitution, but to what is now forbidden by the un-written Constitution. In either of these cases, what would the American courts decide? They would find no violation of the written Constitution, but only of the present unwritten or working Constitution. The American can console himself in his ignorance by the oft-quoted remark: "The Supreme Court has the last guess." The word "unconstitutional" refers to an enactment in such conflict with the written Constitution and decisions thereunder, that American courts will not consider it legal. When legislation beyond the powers conferred by the written Constitution is attempted and a case, for whose decision it is necessary to decide the power of Congress so to enact, is brought to the courts, they will declare the attempted legislation void. The courts, and they alone, have this power. Hence the word "unconstitutional" in America means illegal.
{107}
In 1913 occurred a modification of the American unwritten or working Constitution which may or may not pass into a permanent change. George Washington and John Adams addressed Congress orally on public affairs. Thomas Jefferson, the third president, being a poor speaker, changed this part of the working Constitution by addressing Congress through written messages. This custom remained as a revision of the working Constitution until 1913. Of this tradition Wilson wrote in 1898: "Hence a sacred rule of constitutional action!"[107-1] In 1913 he, as president, reverted from this "sacred rule" to the oral custom of Washington, and the country's comment was largely commendatory. In this instance it is likely that the Supreme Court may not guess at all!
Illustrative of the British significance of "unconstitutional" is quoted the following, written in 1910: "It is an undoubted rule of the English constitution that the king shall not refuse his assent to a bill which has passed both Houses of Parliament, but it is certainly not a law. Should the king veto such a bill his action would be unconstitutional, but not illegal."[107-2] A corresponding American example might be furnished by the action of an American president in issuing an order, without being authorized thereto by Congress, temporarily repealing part of a tariff bill. Such an act being outside of the scope of a president's authority would, if reviewed by a court as part of the ratio decidendi of a case, be held unconstitutional and therefore illegal.
{108}
These British and American usages of "constitution" and "unconstitutional" are reflected in the five other Pan-Angle nations. It consequently behoves one to use either of these words with careful attention to the meaning desired. But of each of the seven nations it may be said: that it is governed under a constitution; that some part of its constitution is written; and that through its constitution, however amendable, ultimate control of all questions is in the voters.
Immediate legislative control of these seven nations is in legislatures composed of representatives who act on behalf of the voters, and subject to restrictions, if any, by the voters only. Until 1911, one nation, the British Isles afforded an exception to this as its legislative power was shared by persons who owed their position to their birth. This instance of presentation in a national legislature which was composed otherwise of elected representatives expired before 1911. Since that date the House of Lords exists not as a part of the legislature but as a consultative body subservient to the will of the House of Commons. To-day the legislatures of the Pan-Angle nations are in all cases representative and the representatives, however elected or appointed act on behalf of the voters.[108-1] Those that are considered appointed are {109} in reality chosen by a method of indirect election. For example, in Canada and in New Zealand the representatives who form the upper houses are chosen by the majority in the lower houses at the time of their election. The fact that these "legislators may, in the Canadian case, hold office for life does not affect the fact that they are elected, but concerns only their terms of office. In New Zealand the terms of office of some members of the upper house is for life, whereas more recent members have been chosen for a period of years. In the United States, according to the provisions of the Federal Constitution, the members of the upper house were formerly chosen by the state legislatures. They are now, by the provisions of the Constitution, elected directly.[109-1] In Australia the upper house members are chosen by the voters organized in voting districts larger than those electing representatives. This last is the method toward which the choice of upper house members seems in Pan-Angle nations to be approaching. The discontent in New Zealand and {110} Canada at their present methods and the recent change in America indicate this trend. This tendency emphasizes the insistence of the voters that representatives are responsible only to the voters.
That such representatives are subject to restrictions, if any, by the voters only, is a statement qualified solely by the technical exception that some of the Britannic nations act under Constitutions enacted for them by another nation, viz. the British Isles. This exception is more true in theory than in reality. If in some of the Britannic nations, such as New Zealand and Newfoundland, there have been no ratifications of their respective frameworks of government, nevertheless the whole spirit of the people in these countries, as well as in Canada, where a like state of affairs exists, and in Australia and South Africa where ratifications have occurred on what is in each case substantially their present Constitution, makes evident the tendency of each one of these nations to regard its Constitution as its own act.[110-1] Consequently, it is fair to say that acting under authority of the voters, representatives carry out the national will in each of the seven Pan-Angle nations.
That executive or administrative control is in charge of elected persons is true without exception {111} in these seven nations. The methods of choosing who shall so administer, may be designated respectively as the British and the American. Under both plans the executive is chosen by indirect popular election. The British system produces a prime minister elected by a majority of the more popular (in the British Isles the sole) chamber of the legislature. This prime minister associates about himself certain other men from the same chamber to carry on the government for a certain time, which may be a shorter and therefore an uncertain time. In the American system the people elect representatives, called the electors, to carry out the election of a president. This forlorn novelty, the Electoral College, shows the futility among Pan-Angles of new-fangled institutions. In all other ideas, the framers of the American Constitution of 1787 followed the evolved and known usages of the race. "It was only when they came to construct the machinery for the election of the President that they left the field of American experience and English example and devised an arrangement which was so original that it was destined to break down almost as soon as it was put in operation."[111-1] The true election is no longer by the electors, but by the people of each state using their allotted number of electors as so many counts in favour of one candidate.[111-2] The president associates about himself a group of men chosen from the nation at large. These men act as {112} secretaries to administer departments in behalf of the president, and have no seat in the legislative branch of the government. These two systems are the types used as models throughout the Pan-Angle self-governing areas.
In the two plans we have popular election with virtual similarity. This is remarked in the following comment on the choice, in 1841, of a British national executive: "But the Reform Act of 1832 introduced a new order of things. In 1835 the result of a general election was for the first time the direct cause of a change of ministry, and in 1841 a House of Commons was elected, for the express purpose of bringing a particular statesman into power. The electorate voted for Sir Robert Peel, and it would have been as impossible for the house then elected to deny him their support as it would be for the college of electors in the United States to exercise their private judgment in the selection of a president."[112-1] The results of parliamentary general elections in the British Isles are announced on newspaper bulletin boards in terms of votes for the leaders of the opposing parties, just as in America the state vote is credited directly to the presidential candidates.
Adherence to either the American or British type of executive does not connote a corresponding similarity in other governmental respects. Australia has a British style executive in connection with an American style legislature. Moreover, Australia's written Constitution has been left unfixed in certain matters, so that, if after trial the British system of executive is found wanting, and some modification {113} shall seem better, a change may be made without the need of constitutional amendment.[113-1]
While representatives are elected to carry out the executive will of the voters under both the British and the American systems, the methods of discharging that duty present differences. These may be summed up in the statement that the British executives take the form of a responsible cabinet; and the American executives, both federal and state, take the form of a cabinet which is not in the same sense responsible. An explanation lies in the race's experience with executives.
The Teuton executive was in the form of an elected king who carried out the wishes of the majority which elected him. He could be and was deposed at the will of his constituents. In short, he was a spokesman. As the nationality of the British Isles crystallized, this spokesman assumed his powers were not subject to recall by his {114} fellow-citizens; considered his office hereditary; and undertook to extend his functions in his own right, not by right of being the spokesman of a majority to whom he was responsible.
At the time of the American Revolution the executive office in the British Isles was held in a way quite unlike the Teuton ideal, and local self-government had, owing to economic changes, sunk to a low level. The king and a few of the landed gentry controlled Parliament and the election of a large proportion of its members.[114-1] When, therefore, the Americans framed their system of government, they had before them an executive example on which they wished to improve. They accordingly created a king who could not initiate or prevent legislation; who was automatically recalled every four years; and who, in common with all other citizens, held no title that could be inherited. Most of the state governments, affected by the same ideas, have gone further. They have even taken from the executive the appointment of judges, making them also elective, though a few states and the national government continue the system of appointing the judiciary through the executive. Further checks to the president's power were devised in making his appointments to the executive and judicial services as well as his negotiations of treaties subject to confirmation by the Senate. Thus the American president is a modified eighteenth-century British king.
After America had become independent and had {115} framed its federal government, the British Isles electorate gradually reasserted its power, and took back into the keeping of its elected representatives the control of executive affairs.[115-1] That return to earlier ideas has produced a spokesman who is elected for five years but may be, and usually is, recalled before the expiration of this term,—by the shifting opinion of the voters manifested in the votes of their representatives in Parliament. This spokesman is no longer called a king but a prime minister. "The imperial sovereignty which is exercised in the name of the King actually resides in the British Prime Minister, a gentleman who holds his office at the pleasure of the majority of the British House of Commons."[115-2] He and his associates, chosen from the members of Parliament, constitute a ministry, of which a portion is called the cabinet. It is this cabinet, this managing committee, that both executes the laws of the British Isles and takes charge of the legislation desired, supposedly, by a majority of the British voters. As the voters elect the members of Parliament and the latter elect the ministry, and as the ministry cannot continue in office in the face of an opposing majority in Parliament, this cabinet executive control is called a "responsible government," i.e. responsible directly to the people.
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In re-attaining the ideal of the Teuton spokesman, America has made slight progress in theory, however much the American president has stood ready to take such position and however much he may have tried, despite the conservative form of constitution he works under, to perform the duties of such an office. Consequently, the American executive stands apart from the legislative power as the British executive stands near, and is part of, the legislative power. To the American executive and his cabinet, chosen not from Congress but from the country at large, is the explicit duty of administering, not of making, laws, except in so far as the veto power gives the president some share in checking legislation. But the instinct of the race still calls on the president, as though he were the spokesman of his nation, to assist the other representatives in making as well as executing the laws. Signs are not wanting that this same insistence of the voters may bring the American executive back to the executive-legislative functions of the race's early spokesmen. At present the president can interpret the manner in which laws shall be administered, but if his interpretation conflicts with the wishes of Congress, it can pass new enactments not susceptible to such interpretation. Hence, practically the president can influence legislation only by his personal force working on Congress, or by his use of the patronage to induce congressmen to take action in accord with his opinion of the national will. There results a possibility of the use of patronage disastrous to the administrative efficiency of the nation. To meet this disastrous use of the patronage, American {117} public opinion has demanded the "merit system" of appointment of all administrative officials of less station than those political agents who must be in sympathy with the political ideas from time to time in the ascendant, as expressed by political parties. Recognizing this need for efficiency in administrative subordinates, American presidents find it difficult to utilize the merit system of appointment and at the same time forward desired legislation. The personal power of the president backed by popular opinion is, however, still a force to be reckoned with by Congress. Through this power he is able to carry out in part at least the demand made by these political descendants of the Teutons that their spokesman, and all other representatives, shall carry out the legislation the voters require.
Although Alexander Hamilton was unable to obtain a realization of his desires to see the cabinet officers entitled to seats in Congress, the president is called on by the written Constitution to report to Congress on "the state of the Union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient."[117-1] In reality he does more, and in accordance with the working Constitution actually furthers the legislative programme called for by his party's majority. He may, if the instincts of American public opinion demand it, easily evolve into a responsible spokesman with other administrative officers about him, much after the similitude of a British responsible cabinet ministry. How this may occur by change in either the working or the written Constitution, {118} or both, it is unnecessary here to elaborate. Enough to show that this present difference in the American and British executives is a result of historical conditions working in both branches of the race.
The representatives who carry out the political will of a Pan-Angle nation are called in America the Administration and in the other six nations the Government. This diversity of terminology may produce misunderstanding, as in the case of "constitution"—the more so as "government" has another meaning common to all Pan-Angles, viz. control of peoples.[118-1] A proverbial Irishman landed in America is asked with which party he sympathizes, and retorts that he is "against the Government." He means probably that he is opposed to the ministry of the day in the British Isles—in short, sympathizes with some Opposition ideas. The American hearer, unaccustomed to the word in this specialized sense, may be astonished at what seems an outburst of anarchy. Later our Irishman, become an American, would reply to the same question about his politics, that he was, or was not, in favour of the Administration. But whichever term is used, Administration or Government, it refers alike to those elected representatives who, by the use of their own discretion, or following the instruction of their voters, or by a combination {119} of both methods, conduct the executive business of their nation.
Because the seven Pan-Angle nations are similar in their forms of government they are in a position to establish a common government. All take for granted the same theories and practically the same procedures. Because these theories and procedures work successfully as they are applied to the government of each nation, Pan-Angles will be predisposed to believe that they will work when applied to a government of the whole race.
[94-1] Ency. Brit., vol. vii. p. 15.
[95-1] Quoted in Woodrow Wilson, Mere Literature, Boston, 1900, p. 105.
[95-2] Ency. Brit., vol. vii. p. 15: "The ideas associated with constitution and constitutionalism are thus, it will be seen, mainly of modern and European origin. They are wholly inapplicable to the primitive and simple societies of the present or of the former times. The discussion of forms of government occupies a large space in the writings of the Greek philosophers,—a fact which is to be explained by the existence among the Greeks of many independent political communities, variously organized, and more or less democratic in character. Between the political problems of the smaller societies and those of the great European nations there is no useful parallel to be drawn, although the predominance of classical learning made it the fashion for a long time to apply Greek speculations on the nature of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy to public questions in modern Europe. Representation . . . the characteristic principle of European constitutions, has, of course, no place in societies which were not too large to admit of every free citizen participating personally in the business of government. Nor is there much in the politics or the political literature of the Romans to compare with the constitutions of modern states. Their political system, almost from the beginning of the empire, was ruled absolutely by a small assembly or by one man."
[97-1] Ency. Brit., vol. vii. p. 15.
[97-2] A. V. Dicey, The Law of the Constitution, London, 1885, p.25.
[98-1] H. E. Egerton, Federations and Unions within the British Empire, Oxford, 1911, p. 33.
[98-2] Goldwin Smith, "Canada, England, and the States," in Contemporary Review, London, March 1907, p. 851.
[98-3] Ency. Brit., vol. ii. p. 966.
[99-1] W.B. Worsfold, The Union of South Africa, London, 1912, p. 128.
[100-1] Ency. Brit., vol. xvii. p. 858: "Finding themselves without warrant in a region beyond their patent, . . . they drew up and signed before landing a democratic compact of government which is accounted the earliest written constitution in history."
[100-2] Ibid., vol. xvii. p. 858.
[101-1] Ency. Brit., vol. xxvii. p. 658.
[101-2] Ibid.
[102-1] J.B. Thayer, John Marshall, Boston, 1901, p. 63
[103-1] J.B. Thayer, John Marshall, Boston, 1901, p. 61.
[104-1] Round Table, London, November 1910, p. 62.
[104-2] Ibid., p. 62.
[105-1] Round Table, London, November 1910, p. 62.
[105-2] "Pacificus," Federalism and Home Rule, London, 1910, p. 2.
[105-3] Ency. Brit., vol. vii. p. 15: "Again, as a term of party politics, constitutional has come to mean, in England, not obedience to constitutional rules . . . but adherence to the existing type of the constitution or to some conspicuous portions thereof,—in other words, conservative."
[107-1] Woodrow Wilson, The State, 1898, Boston, rev. ed., 1911, p. 378.
[107-2] Ency. Brit., vol. vii. p. 14.
[108-1] The fact that so-called "governors" are sent out from the British Isles to the five newer Britannic nations does not affect the statements in this paragraph. Such "governors" do not share in legislation, but acquiesce in legislation formulated by others. Such "governors" are best considered as ambassadors with peculiar local recognition, who act under orders from and in behalf of the government of the British Isles, and act also wherever possible in behalf of all six of the Britannic nations and their dependencies. Cf. ante, p. 89.
[109-1] The Seventeenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, initiated by Congress in 1912, requiring the direct election of senators by the voters of each state, came into force May 31, 1913. The practical effects of direct election were, however, previously obtained in some states, the legislatures electing as senators candidates already designated by the voters. This instance, in which the working Constitution violated the spirit of the written Constitution, is interesting as evidence of the flexity of the American Constitution and of the strength of the spirit of local self-government. Cf. Britannica Year Book, London, 1913, pp. 744-745.
[110-1] That Australia may change its Constitution regardless of the wishes of the British Isles, cf. Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, chapter viii. paragraph 128, and comments thereon in C.P. Lucas, A Historical Geography of the British Colonies, vol. vi., Australasia, by A. D. Rogers, Oxford, 1907, pt. i., p. 289.
[111-2] Concerning the alteration in procedure of the American Electoral College whereby presidential electors are pledged before their election, cf. Ency. Brit., vol. xxvii. p. 655.
[112-1] Ency. Brit., vol. xx. p. 845.
[113-1] Cf. W.H. Moore, The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, 2nd ed., Melbourne, 1910, p. 297: "Further, the Constitution recognizes, if it does not establish, the Cabinet system in the Commonwealth, and the responsibilities of the Executive extend to the consideration of the subjects committed to Parliament, and, if need be, to the initiation of legislation upon them," Also B, R. Wise, The Commonwealth of Australia, London, 1909, pp. 193-194: "At the same time, the provisions which enable its [responsible government] continuance are sufficiently wide to allow of other systems, should this one prove unsuited to a Federation. Except that Ministers must sit in Parliament, there seems no limit to the changes which might be made with the acquiescence of the Governor-General, in the method of appointment, tenure of office, or function," Cf. Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, chapter i., part i., paragraph 5.
[114-1] Woodrow Wilson, The State, 1898, Boston, rev. ed., 1911, p. 889, gives this lack of local self-government as one of the causes of the American Revolution.
[115-1] Cf. Ency. Brit., vol. xx. pp. 845-849; and Britannica Year Book, London, 1913, pp. 491-497 and 480-482.
[115-2] F. S. Oliver, Alexander Hamilton: An Essay on American Union, London, 1906, p. 447. Students who are mystified by allusions to the "Crown," the "King in Council," and the "King has graciously consented," etc., should find the sentence above quoted a valuable explanation.
[117-1] Constitution of the United States, art. ii. sec. 3.
[118-1] Woodrow Wilson, The State, 1898, Boston, rev. ed., 1911, p. 572: "Government, in its last analysis, is organized force. . . . The machinery of government necessary to such an organization consists of instrumentalities fitted to enforce in the conduct of the common affairs of the community the will of the sovereign men: the sovereign minority, or the sovereign majority."
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VI
DANGERS
DANGER may arise to menace the Pan-Angle civilization from three sources: from within any of the seven groups; from between any of the groups; or from outside civilizations.
The first of these sources exists in every body politic. Civil discord whenever it becomes active must be cured as it develops—from within. The soundness of a nation lies in its ability to cope with internal disorder and still maintain its integrity before the world. Any interference, however kindly meant, only exasperates those on the spot. No Britisher, for example, can improve the situation in South Africa by sympathizing with "Hindus" that South Africa does not want.[120-1] And especially is it true among Pan-Angles to whom local self-government is instinctive, that {121} each political entity must look to the order of its own household.
The second source of danger is more grave. As long as the seven nations remain in real or hazily defined independence of each other frictions are bound to arise. These frictions may grow from the competitions of commerce. They may cause reprisals of commerce. Commerce affords the quickest attack on a nation's standard of living. Those who abhor war often overlook the fact that trade reprisal may also produce similar inexpressible suffering. The frictions of commerce in the thirteen American nations in the eighteenth century, the similar discords in Australia before 1900, and in South Africa before 1910, point the same lesson—an adequate central government to adjust such differences. While lacking such an adequate central government for the seven Pan-Angle nations, our only recourse when interests conflict is to our mutual forbearance.
Within a nation a government hales offenders before a court empowered to enforce its decisions. Between nations there is no such tribunal. A court is "a body in the government to which the public administration of justice is delegated."[121-1] This presupposes in the court power to bring parties before it; a law governing the case; and power to enforce a decision. The Hague Tribunal or any other existing so-called "international {122} arbitration court" has no one of these three attributes. It is no court at all. Any body of presumably well-intentioned persons anywhere can listen to a dispute and give advice. This is all the Hague Tribunal, for all its name, can do. The contending parties can take the advice or not as they like. No parties can be compelled to appear before this non-governmental body; no one can know beforehand, except by frangible mutual agreement with his opponents and with the "court," what rules are to govern the decision; and on no party can a decision be enforced. "In international affairs the primitive rule, that 'might is right' still holds good, for either side to a quarrel can insist on a resort to force. In the outer void of world politics there is no reign of law, for there is no law-maker; there is no assured justice, for there is no judge; there is no safety for the weak, for there are no police to whom they can appeal.
"Why is this? It is because no nation is willing to submit its destinies to a tribunal over which it has no control, or to surrender its armaments to a world authority which will use them to enforce some international code of its own creation."[122-1]
Inter-Pan-Angle frictions in the past have been numerous, the American Revolution being merely the most disastrous. Troubles that have arisen {123} between the British Isles and Canada and between the British Isles and the United States since the peace of 1814 may be passed over because more happily terminated.[123-1] Other of the nations have likewise had their family quarrels with the British Isles. Three years before the Boer War, a South African wrote: "The most powerful factor which makes for disunion at present is the interference of the British Government in the internal affairs of South Africa. . . . England's periods of active interference in South Africa have always been disastrous to herself and to South Africa—indeed the present troubles may all be traced directly to Lord Carnarvon's attempt to force his policy on South Africa."[123-2] Twelve years later, the Boer War being over, and the union of the four South African provinces being not yet accomplished, another South African wrote: "Directly after [after the Chinese indentured labourers in the Transvaal were 'freed' by the British Isles Government][123-3] came the Zulu rebellion in Natal, and so enraged were the South African colonies, so bitter and so angry with the Home Government, that, had it been possible, they would have broken away. Given another crisis of the kind in more prosperous times, and the British will go solid with the Dutch for independence and a Republic."[123-4] The same dangers lurked in the recent suggestion that the British {124} Isles should interfere in South Africa in reference to Asiatic Indians in Natal.
Nor is it alone in the realms of legislation and administration where partisan politics may be factors that such frictions arise. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council of the British Isles is still, however rarely used, the supreme appellate court for the five over-seas Britannic nations. Against its fitness for the position, the Court of Appeal of New Zealand in 1903 passed formal and deliberate resolutions—reading, in part, as follows: "That the decisions of this Court should continue to be subject to review by a higher Court is of the utmost importance. The knowledge that a decision can be reviewed is good alike for Judges and litigants. Whether, however, they should be reviewed by the Judicial Committee, as at present constituted is a question worthy of consideration. That Court, by its imputations in the present case, by the ignorance it has shown in this and other cases of our history, of our legislation and of our practice, and by its long-delayed judgments, has displayed every characteristic of an alien tribunal. If we have spoken strongly it is because we feel deeply. And we speak under grievous and unexampled provocation."[124-1] It is inevitable that different political groups without {125} more adequate cohesion than sentiment and shifting political desires should have had such family quarrels. It is unnecessary here to quote other instances from the past.
To-day's inter-Pan-Angle frictions are the inevitable results of the international conflicts of local national policies. Some of them are trivial; others, vital. And from even trivial questions improperly handled grow wars. "A White Australia," "No Indians for the Transvaal," "No Hindus for British Columbia,"[125-1] are familiar slogans suggesting all sorts of possible disagreements for the settlement of which there is no court in existence. The questions of Asiatic migrations are not trivial to the six nations exasperated thereby. Yet even if all these questions were removed, there would remain many opportunities for discord still unadjusted. For the six Britannic nations Downing Street is the only medium for adjusting such discords. And the lack of power behind the decrees of Downing Street results in an accumulation of makeshifts that is provocative of future troubles.
Between the United States and the British Isles the Monroe Doctrine has at times bulked large as a possible source of disagreement. The question of Panama Canal tolls has recently rasped these nations' amiability. It is worth while to examine into these trouble breeders and to see how the situations would be altered if the two countries were {126} treating not as independent units but as parties to a huge federation.
The Monroe Doctrine was dictated to American statesmen by the fear of Europe. To the people of the United States its maintenance has meant safety from aggression. It has lived by their sanction alone. "It would have been forgotten within 60 days after President Monroe first formulated it in a presidential message if it had not met with a response in popular feeling. . . . the popular feeling existed long before Monroe was president, for Jefferson stated principles of foreign policy which embodied the ideas associated now for 90 years with Monroe's name. . . . And thus America has always, down to the present crisis with Mexico, followed the national instinct concerning entanglements on its own part in Europe's affairs, and interferences on Europe's part in the affairs of this hemisphere." ". . . Whenever a specific issue arises in our relations with Latin-America, a practical test of what the public feeling in this country amounts to is offered. Our history for the past dozen years abounds in 'incidents' that revealed the public temper. It is certain that whenever such a test has been made in the Latin-American states around the Caribbean Sea, the fear of the jealousy of European encroachment manifests itself instantly and warns the administration of the day what the people expect the government to do. The Monroe doctrine, or the idea, feeling or instinct upon which it is based, thus is repeatedly referred to the people for a fresh expression of their sentiment, and there is no prospect that it will become an obsolete feature of our foreign policy so long as these re current {127} tests find the people vitally interested in its preservation."[127-1]
The maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine, whatever it may mean, is to the American voter what the maintenance of a Big Fleet, whatever the size may be, is to the British voter. A Britannic authority thus expresses the feelings of the average Britisher: "Our 'man on the omnibus' has never failed as yet to respond to an agitation on behalf of the Fleet. He did so instantly in 1909, and he will always do so again. Given a serious division between the parties on the naval question, there can be no doubt which will win. . . . Whenever the controversy is taken to the country, the country decides for the larger Fleet."[127-2] The American Monroe Doctrine and the British Big Fleet are the outcome of the instinctive fears Pan-Angles hold towards Europe.
The Monroe Doctrine was not designed as a weapon against the British Isles any more than the Big Fleet is built to fight American ships. The older country was in hearty agreement with President Monroe's original pronouncement. "Indeed it was Canning's policy, summed up three years later by his famous reference to the necessity of calling the New World into existence to restore the balance of the Old."[127-3] As long, however, as the British Isles remains an outsider it falls within the definition of "any European power" of the message, just as there is nothing to prevent the {128} United States, as long as it remains an outsider, from suffering from the strength of the Big Fleet.
The two countries are independent now and must in the last resort each protect itself from the other, however much they may prefer friendship. As members of a federation each would be spared the necessity of self-protection against the other. In such event the Monroe Doctrine would apply to non-Pan-Angles only and the Fleet would be the instrument by which it was enforced.
The question of Canal tolls to many Americans to-day is a matter of only national, not international, politics. They believe tolls should be paid for Canal privileges. They also, however, seek a means of lowering transcontinental freight rates. As only American ships are allowed by law to engage in American coastwise trade, these are the only competitors of the railroads. To free such ships from Canal tolls might be a means toward lowering transcontinental freight rates. Those Americans who so believe are pleased if the Hay-Pauncefoote treaty seems to allow an interpretation favourable to their purpose. Other Americans believe no such interpretation possible, whatever the problems of national economics. To both, however, outside criticism of "violation of treaty" may induce merely the exasperation that leads to refusal to discuss the question.
The difficulty, as our nations are now organized, is that a question of mutual interest is decided by the majority in power in one of the nations. In the present instance it was the United States that {129} controlled the situation. The United States decided. Afterwards the British Isles might, if it wished, protest in terms of whatever mildness or vigour its public policy dictated. The British Government has shown itself forbearing. It protested but did not press its claims in terms incompatible with peaceful relations. The American government, unantagonized, was left in a mood to review the matter and, as seems probable, to alter its previous decision. In some other matter the tables may be reversed. The British Isles may hold in its power the solution of some question of interest to the United States. And the United States may have only the opportunity to remonstrate in its turn against what it considers an "unfair" interpretation of a treaty. Such remonstrance is apt to be tinged with hostility, the thing we wish most of all to avoid. Having no common government, the two nations have no court to decide the case. Were they members of a federation, such machinery would be established and in constant working order.
Separate political existences of seven Pan-Angle nations do not make for peace. If for us is coming the great millennium, so sweetly dreamed of by so many, it will not come the sooner by perpetuating opportunities for discord. A common government over Pan-Angles would be copying what we have already done successfully in smaller "closer unions." Before the formation of one of these, it was stated: "Three choices therefore lie before the people of South Africa. The make-shift regime of the High Commissioner, the jarring separation of the States of South America, the noble union of the States of {130} North America."[130-1] This might be paraphrased. Three choices lie before the Pan-Angles: the make-shift regime of Downing Street and the gambling uncertainties of arbitration boards, the jarring separation we have known in our past, the noble method of union which our race has evolved, tested, and in four separate nations adopted. By solving our international differences of opinion in a federal government we can husband our strength for self-defence as a united power against other civilizations.
Despite our self-esteem we are not the only civilization in the world. There are others who need land for their children, as much or more than we do. These others wish to see the world "bettered" by their ideas. If we are wise we shall recognize these foreign aspirations to be as normal as our own. As we have progressed other civilizations have progressed, even though differently. And difference does not mean inferiority. Once we could believe that our rivals, personal, national, or racial, were bad because different; but nowadays we cannot call it wrong when others, less favourably situated than we in the sunshine of this world, strive like ourselves for comfort. "The tragedy of history is not the conflict between right and wrong, but the conflict between right and right." Each civilization knows it is right. Each is right {131} till another civilization is proved to be not only right, but better. A civilization is better than ours if it shall prove its people able to conquer our people—through cutting off our food by more resourceful trading, thriftier living, or war. As it has always been since the Pan-Angles were a people, the world is now an inter-civilization competition selecting the fittest to survive.
Four nations of men, white like ourselves and holding some of the same ideals, have been in the past our life and death rivals. Spain, Portugal, Holland, and France all were great before we were. They discovered and pre-empted a large part of the world. To the shores of almost everyone of the seven Pan-Angle nations their keels have come with intent to seize land. Our rivals often succeeded and held the land for a time until we grew strong enough to take it from them. Our struggles against these out-run powers make thrilling stories, for they tested the courage, the resources, and the tenacity of the Pan-Angle victors.
Portugal and Spain once shared between them the seas of the world—according to a Pope's decree. They raced in opposite directions to see which first should reach the Antipodes. Macao and Manila, lying opposite each other, show where the two routes terminated. To-day Spain holds no land outside of Europe except the Canaries and odd inconsequential bits of Africa. From before the days of the Armada to the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, Pan-Angles have been plundering Spain. Some of the spoils they kept for themselves, some they gave away. The Ladrones in a recent division were allotted to {132} Germany. Portugal holds more extensive reminders of its former empire. The Azores, the Cape Verdes, Timor and Goa, and strips of East and West Africa show where that nation was once supreme. Both the African areas are bordered by Pan-Angle and German holdings, and it requires no shrewd forecasting to predict their future.[132-1]
Holland holds the Dutch East Indies—a dependency huge in extent and population as compared to the tiny European state,[132-2] but small "compared to the lands adapted for true colonization, long ago relinquished. Holland holds also certain remnants in the Western Hemisphere, as Spain and Portugal do not. But like Spain and Portugal, Holland holds these dependencies not by virtue of its own strength, but by virtue of the matched strength of others, the balance of power leaving Holland for the present undisturbed.
France, the most recent of these four rivals of the Pan-Angles, to-day holds dependencies of {133} greater area than those of the three other rivals combined.[133-1] Over lands on, or islands near, every continent, the French flag flies. Only the flags of the British Isles and of Russia are to-day further flung. No one feels confident of despoiling France at will, and the British Isles regards its late rival as an effective ally. Yet the French hold no true colonies, lands in which France grows again in a new life. Canada and Louisiana are now the nurseries of a vigorous Pan-Angle stock.
Towards these four out-run powers we harbour no unfriendly sentiments. They, alone or combined, can no longer hurt us. We have grown so large and control so vast an area and population that we forget that these rivals once threatened our existence. The place-names they gave and many of their words, now part of the English language, hardly recall the old struggles. So thoroughly have we taken the lands they claimed, that with our own history we associate such names as Columbus, Da Gama, Magellan, Van Diemen, Tasman, Champlain, and La Salle. With our former competitors we can make alliances, if we wish, for the sake of guarding them and ourselves from the powers that loom out of the future.
But because of such friendly alliances we must not lose sight of the truth. Our present supremacy we hold not by the courtesy of these our former rivals, but by the might of our forefathers, who by their strength procured lands for us. The past secured to us the present. The visible method was war. "Between the [English] Revolution and {134} the Battle of Waterloo, it may be reckoned that we waged seven great wars, of which the shortest lasted seven years and the longest about twelve. Out of a hundred and twenty-six years, sixty-four years, or more than half, were spent in war."[134-1] At the end of these wars the Pan-Angles had outrun their rivals.[134-2] That century and a quarter witnessed the steady extension of the Pan-Angle control in North America."The struggle was literally worldwide. Red men scalped each other by the Great Lakes of North America, and black men fought in Senegal in Africa; while Frenchmen and Englishmen grappled in India as well as in Germany, and their fleets engaged on every sea. The most tremendous and showy battles took place in Germany; and, though the real importance of the struggle lay outside Europe, still the European conflict in the main decided the wider results. William Pitt, the English minister, who was working to build up the great British empire, declared that in Germany he would conquer America from France. He did so."[134-3] Taxation in Massachusetts during one of the years of this war was equivalent to an income tax of 66 per cent.[134-4] After Waterloo for over half a century this extension continued. In this struggle for our world domination, in which American and Britannic Pan-Angles each did their share, we showed we were fighters. We fought to win. We won.
{135}
During and after our struggles with these four white nations, we have had lesser struggles with peoples of other colours. Our successes in these struggles have added to our self-satisfaction. Thus far our efforts against the red, brown, and black have not been too great for us. In America the red man had land we needed; we drove him out. In New Zealand the brown man's country was one we could thrive in; we installed ourselves there. In India and through the East the brown man had rich territories; we subdued him, we helped him to increase in numbers, we sold him more of our goods. The same can be said of the blacks in various tropical regions. In Australia the black man had lands suitable for whites, and we occupied them. In South Africa we have done the same, and, though the possession of the whites is hardly as yet undisputed, we bear there as elsewhere a mien of self-reliant superiority.
Our successes have brought us the material benefits we see in the well-fed prosperity of our peoples. The non-material benefits it is difficult to estimate. So naturally do we accept both, that the thoughtless among us assume such comfort to be the normal lot of good people such as we are. We are content with our present portion—the best the world provides—and would counsel others to be content with theirs. We think we are a peaceful people, and deprecate as bad form the huge expenditures made by European nations for military and naval preparations. Some Americans contemplate their small army as though their nation were by that proved virtuous, much as though the learned Babu, contemplating the fur-clad {136} Eskimo, should pride himself on his own tropical attire. Like the sons of wealthy shopkeepers who disdain to demean themselves by trading, we Pan-Angles forget sometimes on what harsh foundations was laid our present exemption from harshness.
Apart from its short-visioned inconsistency, this attitude may betray us into dangers. The English-speaking peoples have fallen into a sense of security, assuming the continuance of our present peace as the normal condition of affairs. We pride ourselves that we mind our own business with success. And from minding it for so long, and with so slight a chance of having it disarranged by outsiders, we have grown accustomed to pursue without doubts our way to greater individual freedom. We are oblivious sometimes of the fact that all our efforts for greater individual freedom are of no avail if some other nation may deprive us of the wherewithal to individualize:—Our land, our trade, and our political system. "To live well a people must first live; and an ideal that ignores the primary conditions of national existence is a castle in the air."[136-1]
Since the throes of the eighteenth century, North America has been developed and Australia and New Zealand have prepared themselves for large populations—all undisturbed by fear of invasions. In these newer countries have been nurtured many of the ideals of the race. There, have been tested not only the federal idea, but also many political and social reforms, such as those whose names are associated with Australasia, but which find a congenial {137} habitat in other branches of the race. In peace we have thus been aiding each other, as we have so often in war. And it is well for us that this reign of peace has continued so long, not merely because peace is to be desired, but because of the strength it allows to accumulate for struggles to come. That this long peace is unusual, that struggles will come, history teaches.
Tacitus tells us of a Teuton tribe, "just and upright." "Unmolested by their neighbors, they enjoyed the sweets of peace, forgetting that amidst powerful and ambitious neighbors the repose, which you enjoy, serves only to lull you into a calm, always pleasing, but deceitful in the end. When the sword is drawn, and the power of the strongest is to decide, you talk in vain of equity and moderation: those virtues always belong to the conqueror. Thus it happened to the Cheruscans: they were formerly just and upright; at present they are called fools and cowards." [137-1]
We, unmolested by our neighbours, are now enjoying "the sweets of peace." Is there anything we are forgetting? Are we backing the Pax Britannica and the Pax Americana with sufficient power to ensure their maintenance? Shall we continue to be called "just and upright"?
We still have land to which to extend our population. Our prosperity is still undimmed. No one is our proved superior in civilization. Recent wars have not contributed to our military reputation, but our faith in our naval superiority has not been shaken and our pride of race intensifies.
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Yet slowly a consciousness is creeping over us by way now of London, now of Brisbane, now of Durban, or again of Vancouver or San Francisco, that all is not as safe for us as it once was. Once we could afford to squabble a bit in the family; now we feel we must stop such silly behaviour. To all of us has come this feeling. It is not merely the appearance of Germany in the North Sea or the South Pacific, nor the desire of Asiatic Indian coolies for entrance to the Transvaal, nor the willingness of these and other Asiatics to share with us the wealth of North America. These are but signs. They forebode coming dangers whose extent we cannot foresee.
Out of the future loom menacing forms, hardly more tangible and comprehensible to us than were the Teutonic hordes to the Romans. What latent energies lie hidden in the north and east we can only fearfully surmise. There, perhaps, are peoples multitudinous in numbers and unmeasured in resources. Their faiths and ideals are not ours. To be subject to them would be no illusion.
Across the north of Europe and Asia stretches Russia—a land of eight and one-half million square miles,[138-1] larger than all the Pan-Angle area were either Australia, Canada or the United States omitted from the total.[138-2] Its population of 168,000,000[138-3] outnumbers the Pan-Angle whites {139} by 22,000,000.[139-1] Russia is self-supporting in that within its borders are food and fuel for years to come. In Siberia are ample coal and iron fields. Petroleum, of such growing importance in these days of aerial navigation, Russia has in plenty. The growth of the Russian power has been practically simultaneous with that of the Pan-Angles, for in 1913 was celebrated the third centenary of Romanoff rule. What was once the small state of Muscovy has extended its borders and pushed back its frontier, until now it presents by far the largest stretch of contiguous territory under one rule in the world. It has, moreover, room for internal development. Only the fighting edges of Siberia are filled with settlers, most of them ex-soldiers and their families. The interior is scantily populated against the time when the advance of the frontier shall be checked.
The significance of this growth has not been ignored in Europe. Statesmen have acted or have feared to act according to their conjectures of Russian desires and powers. For years Russia has been, and indeed still is, the bugbear of the British on the Indian and Persian frontiers. Urged by the British Isles, Japan, fighting for its very existence, checked Russia. The resulting loss to that country was insignificant. It could receive many such checks and still be a formidable rival. Russia's success against Pan-Angles would mean not only to them the material loss of lands and food, but to the whole world the loss of some measure of individual liberty, for the unity and strength of that great country are founded on {140} characteristics the antitheses of those which make the Pan-Angles great.
But a danger greater than Russia has thrown its shadow in our path. The white race once felt assured that it was the chosen race among mankind. It met the red, brown, and black races never to its own ultimate disadvantage, and often, it was convinced, for their good. It felt a similar destiny toward the yellow races. It insisted that they open their doors to the white man's trade and took them to school in the white man's ways. Now the white race apprehensively wonders if it has made a mistake, if destiny is at last on the other side.
China is the wonder of history, both ancient and modern. Civilization after civilization has battered at its gates, taken some trifle only to lose it, and has departed. Chinese civilization has continued unharmed by its transient rivals. Each of these rivals has pondered over China's strangeness, and has failed to impress foreign ideals on its people. The Arab, Malay, Portuguese, Dutch, French, English, American, German, and now the Japanese and the Russian people, have taken trifles. Of these Macao, French Cochin-China, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Kiaochow, Wei-Hai-Wei, Formosa, and Tibet are modern examples. How long it will be before these land-takings revert to the Celestial Empire remains to be seen. "The old negative, anti-foreign prejudice is giving way to a positive sentiment of national ambition. With a population—according to the last census—of over 430,000,000 of the cheapest and most industrious workers in the world, China is bound sooner or later to dominate the East, unless she becomes divided {141} against herself. And this the pressure from the greedy competition of foreign powers seems certain to prevent."[141-1]
To-day China is perhaps to become definitely a republic. No one knows what China can or will do. The white race realizes that its problem now is no longer how to distribute among its nations the lands of the yellow races, but how to prevent the yellow races from distributing its lands among themselves. Men who can endure arctic cold and tropical heat with like fortitude and profit, may soon become a factor in the defensive problem of the Pan-Angles.
"The history of China, ancient and modern, is an eternal series of paroxysms; its keynote is bloodshed and famine, with periods of peace and prosperity purchased by the slaughter of countless innocents. Its splendid civilization, based on an unassailable moral philosophy and the canons of the Sages, has ever proved powerless against the inexorable laws of nature, the pitiless cruelty of the struggle for life. . . ."[141-2] It seems not impossible that the Chinese may seek to ameliorate their condition, to lessen "the pitiless cruelty of the struggle for life" by overflowing into the lands now held by the Pan-Angles. By what means could we save ourselves from being crushed before the advance of a people our superiors in thrift and industry and in ability to render the soil productive, and who are three times our number?
{142}
Russia and China may be the active foes of our children. We can bequeath them only such aid in their struggle as our foresight dictates. Meanwhile we have problems of our own demanding more immediate solution.
Russia and China are the rivals of to-morrow.
Japan and Germany are the rivals of to-day.
To Japan the Pan-Angles should doff their hats as to their peers. Radically different, they are not our inferiors. Japan has forged ahead materially at a rate that Pan-Angles have never in their history approached. In 1853, when the American Pan-Angle Admiral Perry forced foreign commerce on Japan, the land was a feudal area given over to devastating civil wars. The privileges that the white races after 1853 exacted have been gradually and entirely taken back. Japan now stands as a world power. Its people are increasing rapidly. It builds its own ships. The three fastest merchant steamers on the Pacific to-day are Japanese.[142-1] No one forgets, and it is hoped that no Pan-Angle underestimates, the medical ability and the discipline that backed the bravery and the patriotic spirit of the Japanese in their life-and-death struggle against Russia. The Japanese have taken Formosa and Korea from China, and have held the last-named acquisition against Russia, taking also from Russia the southern half of Sakhalin. As Scotland, Wales, and England have been called Great Britain, so the Japanese have called their home group "Dai Nippon," Great Japan.
Japan, the Dai Nippon group of islands, has a {143} geographical area of about 150,000 square miles, or three-quarters the size of Germany, or slightly greater than the area of the British Isles. Its population of forty-nine millions is three-quarters that of Germany, or about one-ninth more than that of the British Isles, or five-sixths that of the whites of the Britannic nations, or over one-third the white population of the Pan-Angle world. Although Formosa and Korea, and possible portions of Manchuria, are to be considered to-day as dependencies of Japan, the fact remains that Great Japan as a power, despite slight differences of dialect, contains a homogeneous people actuated by the same spirit. The population is now overburdening the land of Japan. Japan must have either more land or more trade in order to feed its people, or it must reduce its standard of living—or lessen the population by emigration.
In Japan's search for more land, Asia offers few inducements.[143-1] From Japan to the west lies China, full to overflowing with people. From Japan to the north and north-west lies Russia-in-Asia under various names. Outside of Asia the allurements increase. From Japan to the southward lie the Philippines, now a Pan-Angle dependency, and the islands of the East Indies,—mostly Dutch, some German, one Portuguese, some French, and some Pan-Angle. This network of islands paves the route from Japan to almost empty Australia and fertile New Zealand. To the eastward, across the Pacific, lie the Hawaiian Islands, the key of the Pacific, containing 80,000 Japanese, which is 45 per cent. of a population {144} of which only a small per cent. are white.[144-1] Further to the eastward lie Alaska, British Columbia, and the Pacific Slope of America—all comparatively empty. Mexico contains Japanese to await there the tide of international events. South of the Panama Canal is a whole continent with its many open places. The Japanese are not a tropical people. They want temperate, arable lands. The best lands for Japan to annex are controlled by Pan-Angles.
Preliminary to annexation in past histories has often gone occupation. But even if annexation by a foreign power is not to follow the occupation of our lands by any considerable number of aliens, who remain aliens loyal to a foreign power, our integrity and welfare are thereby seriously disturbed. Several of our groups are awakening to this fact. Alaska, British Columbia, and the Pacific Slope states on one side of the ocean, New Zealand and Australia on the other, and the Hawaiian Islands between, all find the problem of Japanese migration a live topic of practical politics. In every one of these places legislation has been enacted to discriminate against the Japanese. To both New Zealand and Australia, the nearness of Japan has been a stimulus toward undertaking means of self-protection, naval and military, since these countries have come to feel that the British navy does not furnish adequate protection to their exposed shores. He who looks into the conditions of exclusion of the Japanese from these Britannic and American shores will note the fact that the {145} action of British Columbia, California, New Zealand, and Australia has at one time or another been in conflict with the treaties made by the larger political entity of which each respectively is a part. He will see how Australia and New Zealand have changed their legislation to accord with the letter, but not the spirit, of the Anglo-Japanese treaty, and how British Columbia and California have insisted on protecting themselves.[145-1]
As new areas of the Pan-Angle world are affected by the problem, such comment as the following appears: "A brisk controversy is going on in the South over the proposed colonization of Japanese in Florida. The newspapers of that state ridicule the alarm shown by Representative Clark; the three or four Japanese seen in Jacksonville, says the Times-Union of that city, appear to be perfectly tame, and the editor concludes: 'It is not at all probable that many Japanese will ever wish to come to Florida, and we are willing that all who wish to come should come. 'The New Orleans Times-Democrat is more pessimistic, and remarks: 'That, it will be remembered, was California's attitude not many years ago.'" [145-2]
In the solution of this problem, which relates not only to the Pacific but which is a problem of a civilization, we are aided by the Pan-Angle individualistic habit of each locality controlling its own local questions. "'No one,' said the Premier of British Columbia the other day . . . 'no one {146} can question the supreme authority of the Legislature of British Columbia to deal with oriental immigration.'"[146-1] In cases where no one does question such authority, the matter is promptly settled according to the wishes of the locality affected. If, on the other hand, anyone does question such authority, the locality has, at least, by its insistence warned the whole race of its perils. Each such insistence offends the Asiatics. To those Pan-Angles concerned, it is becoming increasingly understood that the struggle has only just begun.
The anti-Asiatic feeling has been expressed from Vancouver to Hobart, and from Auckland to Durban. Its utterance has been earnest and measured, bitter and extravagant, loud and long. A whole race would not in various corners of the earth so talk and act for no reason. It would be tedious here to catalogue the phrases ranging from mild to execrative. Nor can the credit be given to any special one of the Pan-Angle nations involved for moderation of statement or care in analysis of the problem.
Enough here to quote a statement of one[146-2] who is known throughout the Pan-Angle world: "The question discussed . . . is based . . . upon the Alien Land Bill recently passed by the California Legislature. Upon that particular measure I have no comment to make; it is in fitter hands than mine. It is to 'the ultimate issue involved,' . . . {147} that I direct my remarks. 'The ultimate issue involved'. ..'is whether Japan, who has made good her title to be treated on a footing of complete equality as one of the Great Powers of the world, is not also entitled to rank among the civilized nations whose citizens the American Republic is ready to welcome, subject to a few well-defined exceptions, within its fold whenever they are prepared to transfer their allegiance to it.' In brief, this means, I apprehend, whether the attainment by Japan of the position of a Great Power entitles her to claim for her citizens free immigration into the territories of any other Great Power, with accompanying naturalization.
". . . In my own appreciation there is no necessary connexion between a nation's status as a Great Power and her right to receive for her people the privileges of immigration and naturalization in the territory of another State; and the reasonings adduced in support of the proposition seem to me defective, both in some of their assertions and still more so in ignoring certain conspicuous facts.
"Primary among these facts is that of the popular will, upon which, in the fundamental conceptions of both British and American government, the policy of a nation must rest. Be the causes what they may—economical, industrial, social, racial, or all four; and if there be any other motives—the will of the people is the law of the Government. So far as that will has been expressed in America and in Canada it is distinctly contrary to the concession of such immigration. With the question of immigration that of naturalization {148} is inextricably involved. There cannot be naturalization without immigration; while immigration without concession of naturalization, though conceivable and possible, is contrary to the genius of American institutions, which, as a general proposition, do not favour inhabitancy without right to citizenship.
"Another tacit assumption is that changes of governmental methods change also natural characteristics, to such an extent as to affect radically those qualities which make for beneficial citizenship in a foreign country. Stated concretely, this means that the adoption of Western methods by Japan has in two generations so changed the Japanese racial characteristics as to make them readily assimilable with Europeans, so as to be easily absorbed. This the Japanese in their just pride of race would be the first to deny. It ignores also the whole background of European history, and the fact that European civilization (which includes America) grew up for untold centuries under influences of which Eastern Asia—including therein Japan—experienced nothing. The 'Foundations of the Twentieth Century,' are not only a succession of facts, or combination of factors. They are to be found chiefly in the moulding of character, national and individual, through sixty-odd generations.
"It is, I conceive, this deep impress of prolonged common experience which constitutes the possibility of assimilation, even among the unhappy, poverty-stricken mass often coming to us, . . . Undoubtedly they constitute a problem, but one with which the immense assimilative force of {149} English institutions, especially when Americanized, has been able so far to deal successfully, and I believe will continue able. But there are those who greatly doubt whether, in view of the very different foundations of the Japanese 20th century, and of the recognized strength and tenacity of character of the Japanese people emphasized by strong racial marks, they could be so assimilated. We who so think—I am one—cordially recognize the great progresses of Japan and admire her achievements of the past half century, both civil and military; but we do not perceive in them the promise of ready adaptability to the spirit of our own institutions which would render naturalization expedient; and immigration, as I have said, with us implies naturalization. Whatever our doubts as to the effect upon national welfare of the presence of an unassimilable multitude of naturalized aliens, the presence of a like number of unnaturalized foreigners of the same type would be even worse.
"The question is fundamentally that of assimilation, though it is idle to ignore that clear superficial evidences of difference, which inevitably sautent aux yeux, due to marked racial types, do exasperate the difficulty. Personally, I entirely reject any assumption or belief that my race is superior to the Chinese, or to the Japanese. My own suits me better, probably because I am used to it; but I wholly disclaim, as unworthy of myself and of them, any thought of superiority. But with equal clearness I see and avow the difficulties of assimilation due to formative influences of divergent pasts and to race. . . .
"Let me say here that . . . is mistaken in the {150} statement that the United States' within living memory waged the greatest civil war of modern times in order to establish the claim of American negroes to equal right of citizenship with the white population.' With the statement falls necessarily his inference from it, that 'a colour bar cannot be logically pleaded as prohibitive.' The United States did not wage the War of Secession even for the abolition of slavery, still less for equal rights of citizenship. Goldwin Smith, as a contemporary, held against us that the war, not being for abolition, was one of conquest. Lincoln said distinctly:—'I will restore the union with slavery or without slavery, as best can be.' Myself a contemporary and partaker, I can affirm this as a general tone, though there was a strong minority of abolition sentiment. The abolition proclamation came 18 months after the war began, and purely as a measure of policy. The full rights of citizenship came after the war ended, as a party political measure, though doubtless with this mingled much humanitarian feeling. Concerning this legislation a very acute American thinker, himself in the war, said to me within the past two years, 'The great mistake of the men of that day was the unconscious assumption that the negro was a white man, with the accident of a black skin.' That is, the question was not one of colour, but of assimilation as involved in race character. Now, while recognizing what I clearly see to be the great superiority of the Japanese, as of the white over the negro, it appears to me reasonable that a great number of my fellow-citizens, knowing the problem we have in the coloured race among us, should dread the introduction {151} of what they believe will constitute another race problem; and one much more difficult, because the virile qualities of the Japanese will still more successfully withstand assimilation, constituting a homogeneous foreign mass, naturally acting together irrespective of the national welfare, and so will be a perennial cause of friction with Japan, even more dangerous than at present. . . .
[Here follows a personal appreciation of the Japanese as Admiral Mahan had known them for forty years, and to which most thoughtful Pan-Angles would gladly subscribe. He then concludes:]
". . . Despite gigantic success up to the present in assimilative processes—due to English institutions inherited and Americanized, and to the prevalence among the children of our community of the common English tongue over all other idioms—America doubts her power to digest and assimilate the strong national and racial characteristics which distinguish the Japanese, which are the secret of much of their success, and which, if I am not mistaken, would constitute them continually a solid homogeneous body, essentially and unchangingly foreign."
If there are, as Admiral Mahan suggests, good reasons why the Japanese should not be allowed to settle in Pan-Angle countries, those certainly form the best of reasons why the Pan-Angles should not allow themselves to occupy a position where Japan could demand of them this privilege for its subjects.
But while Japanese immigration, for the present peaceful except in the field of economics, has been {152} agitating the nations that border the Pacific, half way round the world other Pan-Angles have had nightmares of a military invasion. "Within twelve hours' steam of Essex and Lincolnshire is the port of Emden, recently adapted for the embarkation of large bodies of troops."[152-1] "The past need not concern us here. However serious the old scares may have been, at least they came and went, leaving a clear sky behind them when they had gone. But now the sky refuses to clear. The 'scare' of 1909, launched on that March afternoon when Sir Edward Grey told the House of Commons that, in view of German competition, the whole British Fleet would have to be rebuilt in Dreadnought form, has left a permanent mark upon the public mind."[152-2]
There, at England's door, has been growing a nation small in geographical area but with a population of 65,000,000 whites,[152-3] which, though less than the number of whites of the United States, is more than the number of whites of the six Britannic nations. Roughly stated, Germany has about one-half as many whites as have all the Pan-Angle nations combined.[152-4] In many respects Germany's position is not unlike Japan's. Both nations have had a victorious rise based on military efficiency, and there is no proof that their naval efficiency is not similarly high. Both nations {153} have, relatively speaking, but a small subject population to control. Both nations must necessarily be warlike on account of the pressure of population about them, and both have birth-rates which are already crowding their lands more than the Pan-Angles are crowding theirs.
Practically all the non-European areas of the world which the white race can occupy are held by the seven Pan-Angle nations, or protected by one of them, or are in the hands of their out-run rivals, or in the control of Japan, Russia, or China. The same is true of lands unsuited for white occupation, but desirable as dependencies. Germany arrived on the scene so recently that it shared practically only the last divisions of the lands of the blacks. Consequently, the only lands available for Germany are those now held by the white and yellow races.
Under such circumstances, if Germany is to take land from whites, Pan-Angle common-sense suggests that such land should not be ours. In accord with such policy is Sir Harry H. Johnston's suggestion that Portugal's African dependencies be divided between the British Isles and Germany.[153-1] If Germany should, however, show a preference for Pan-Angle lands and should ask for those lands on which we now depend for our life and comfort, common-sense equally suggests that we be in a position to refuse. We could not expect the Germans to starve themselves and their children, or even to reduce their standard of living out of respect for claims we could no longer uphold. We did not so respect the claims {154} of Portugal or Spain, Holland or France. Episodes in our own history ought to point plain the only road to security of possession.
The rise of the German Empire might by Pan-Angles be regarded with antagonism, if Japan, Russia, and China offered no dangers. The old and lasting fear that Pan-Angles have for centuries held toward Europe was the fear that called for the naval supremacy of the British Isles and for the Monroe Doctrine of America. Antagonism toward Germany might seem justified were it not that the fear of these other three powers, so different in civilization from us, makes Germany our natural and civilization ally. The victory of Germany over any portion of the Britannic world would be a Pan-Angle calamity. The fall of modern Germany would be hardly less of a Pan-Angle calamity. Any thought of the whites weakening each other, and especially of weakening their chance for developing their individualism, should be abhorrent to every Pan-Angle or German who can see further than the mass of his fellows.
International politenesses often verge towards the extravagant. But certainly, if human relationships can be ascribed to nations, Germany is our near of kin. German blood has enriched ours for fifteen hundred years. Pan-Angle ideals of religious and political freedom came originally from Germany. Pan-Angle language, Pan-Angle law, and many of the qualities of which we are most proud had the same source. Individualism has developed more highly among the Pan-Angles—at least in matters of government. This is {155} demonstrated by Pan-Angle and German ideas regarding civil officers. "Of course, in every nation its affairs are, and must be, conducted by officials. That is as true of America as of Germany. The fundamental difference is that with us these official persons are executive officers only, the real captain is the people; while in Germany these official persons are the real governors of the people, subject to the commands of one who repeatedly and publicly asserts that his commission is from God and not from the people."[155-1] Contrast with this the utterance of an American "official": "the people have not transferred their government to us. They still retain ownership and all the rights and powers of ownership. We are merely their temporary agents in performing duties which they have delegated to us."[155-2] The German point of view would be intolerable to a Pan-Angle, but there is no reason for assuming that this bureaucratic country may not develop a truly representative form of government.[155-3]
To prevent a conflict with Germany should be not merely a matter of Pan-Angle sentiment, but of Pan-Angle business. If the Pan-Angles were so strong that Germany was no longer a source of danger to anyone of their nations, Germany would be changed from a dangerous rival to a political ally. It would be the buffer state for the Pan-Angles {156} against Russia, indeed against all Europe, providing thus greater security for itself as well as for us. We now realize the world has already been staked off by the white and yellow races. While the British Isles and Germany are making extraordinary efforts to build navies, Japan, Russia, and China are growing unmolested. Germany should be the nation with which all Europe and all Pan-Angles should unite to neutralize Japanese and other Asiatic questions that press for solution, and the nation with which all other whites should rally if this test of strength ever has to come. Properly understood in reference to the economic and political struggle between the white and yellow races, a Pan-Angle federation should be welcomed by every German.
The Pan-Angles are responsible for large subject populations, which they both control and protect. This requires a greater or less military effort according to local circumstance and the fluctuating make-up of the international situation. Fortunately, from a military point of view, these Pan-Angle dependencies are widely scattered over the earth, and of such diverse languages that no combination among them has thus far appeared probable. But in case of any conflict with a foreign power they must always be regarded as an element of weakness to us. The Pan-Angles are not a military people. In each of our recent wars we have had to make ready an army after hostilities began—even though we were not taken unawares. In this regard we are at a disadvantage with those powers who keep {157} their military force in constant readiness. In the past we have been willing to forego a fighting efficiency, if thereby we could be free of a possibly tyrannical system and obtain greater play for our individualism. We may continue of this mind for the future. But if we choose to disregard the usual national precaution of military safety, we must make doubly sure of other strength as its equivalent.
The Pan-Angles do not occupy a contiguous land area. They are scattered over the globe, and are exposed not only on their many shores but throughout the length of their lines of sea communication. The oceans sever them from each other and sever some of them from their food. One answer to the problems which arise from this wide separation is sea power. On this depends the very daily existence of some of our groups.
Until recently six of our nations have relied almost entirely upon the taxing power and efforts of the British Isles to maintain a navy for them.
The burden on the British Isles has been heavy, and is growing steadily heavier. To defend the British Isles from Germany the British navy was withdrawn to European waters. Since 1910 this concentration has been practically a defence of the North Sea shores of the British Isles. How long can the British Isles alone bear the strain of its own naval defence? And who is to defend the other five Britannic nations? "We have made great efforts, as in the past, but we are realizing that even so our efforts, in Great Britain alone, may before long fall short of what Imperial security requires. And this increasing anxiety is not due solely to a narrow {158} apprehension of German aims. It is due to the rate of naval expansion everywhere."[158-1] "It is quite clear that external pressure is already more severe than it has been for nearly a hundred years, and that it will probably become even greater in the future."[158-2]
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have now taken steps towards maintaining their own navies to co-operate with the British navy, but it is still true that, "Once the command of the sea is lost by the [British] Empire no local system of defence, naval or military, could secure Australia's autonomy, and she would become the prey of the strongest maritime power."[158-3] A like statement could be made of the other younger Britannic nations. And while the American navy is not to be disregarded as a possible aid, it is not wise for either the Britannic or American people to assume that navies under separate governments will act with that promptness possible under a single control.
In comparison with some of their competitors now rising to the stage of active rivalry, all the seven Pan-Angle nations are collectively only one first-class world-power. Each Pan-Angle nation is naturally more solicitous for its own welfare than for that of its fellow nations. The Englander is exasperated that the other Britannic nations take so little interest in the German peril. Australia and South Africa block the immigration of Asiatics from British dependencies. Canada dallies over {159} the merits or demerits of a naval appropriation bill. The United States fortifies its Canal. Our co-operation is still uncertain, for we are still divided into seven different nations. Neither New Zealand, nor Australia, nor Newfoundland, nor Canada, nor South Africa, nor the British Isles, nor the United States would care to try to stand alone against the possible combinations that might be brought against it; sentiments of warmest friendship, or even treaties, are a poor substitute for a machinery of government tried and tested before the crash comes. As they now are, the seven Pan-Angle nations offer the maximum of inducements for inter-Pan-Angle friction and extra-Pan-Angle aggressions. Together the Pan-Angles could ensure the peace of the world.
[120-1] The Times, London, November 28, 1913, Cape Town despatch concerning Lord Hardinge's speech at Madras, November 26, in reference to treatment of Indians in South Africa states: "After criticizing severely several passages in the speech, the Cape Times, referring to the suggestion that the Imperial Government should intervene in South Africa, utters the warning that this way madness lies."
[121-1] Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Rawle's revision, Boston, 1897, "Court."
[122-1] Round Table, London, February 1911, pp. 107-108; cf. also Round Table, December 1912, p. 29: "Arbitration is no cure for war so long as there is no agreement between nations to substitute arbitration for war, and no power strong enough to enforce such an agreement if made."
[123-1] For an account of some of these discords, cf. H. C. Lodge, One Hundred Years of Peace, New York, 1913; also Round Table, London, December 1913, pp. 106-122.
[123-2] P. A. Molteno, A Federal South Africa, London, 1896, p. viii.
[123-3] Concerning these Chinese coolies, cf. Ency. Brit., vol. xxv. p.481.
[123-4] M. C. Bruce, The New Transvaal, London, 1908, p. Ill.
[124-1] "Proceedings in the Court of Appeal of New Zealand with reference to comments made upon that Court by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the case of Wallis and Others, Appellants, and His Majesty's Solicitor-General for the Colony of New Zealand, Respondent. Together with the Judgments of the Court of Appeal and the Privy Council in the same Case," Dunedin [New Zealand], 1903, p. 28.
[125-1] "Hindus" (an unfortunate application of a religious creed-name to a people) who had been admitted to the Philippines and who sailed from Manila to San Francisco were debarred entrance to United States, according to Springfield (Massachusetts) Weekly Republican, December 11, 1913.
[127-1] Springfield (Massachusetts) Weekly Republican, November 27, 1913: "The Monroe Doctrine Today."
[127-2] Round Table, London, September 1913, p. 680.
[127-3] Cf. Ency. Brit., vol. xviii. p. 789.
[130-1] A Review of the Present Mutual Relations of the British South African Colonies, to which is appended a Memorandum on South African Railway Unification, "Printed by Authority" [Johannesburg, 1907]; Lord Selborne's letter of January 7, 1907, p. viii.
[132-1] Sir Harry H. Johnston in Nineteenth Century, London, March 1912, questions the appropriateness of leaving these dependencies in the care of Portugal. Cf. thirteen months later, Springfield (Massachusetts) Weekly Republican, June 12,1913: "That something is brewing in the way of a partition of Portuguese Africa seems likely despite official disclaimers, and the London Spectator now sketches a hypothetical division. . . . " Cf. Transvaal Leader, Johannesburg, December 5, 1912, for an account of LourenÇo Marques' "warning against the neglectful attitude of the Home [Lisbon] Government toward this Colony."
[132-2] The ratio of the population of British India to the British Isles is approximately 7 to 1. A like ratio exists between the populations of the Dutch Indies and Holland. Cf. A. Cabaton, Java, Sumatra, and the other Islands of the Dutch East Indies, trans. Bernard Miall, London, 1911, p. 26.
[133-1] George Philip & Son Ltd., Chamber of Commerce Atlas, London, 1912, p. 32.
[134-1] J.R. Seeley, The Expansion of England, London, 1883, p. 20.
[134-4] C.A.W. Pownall, Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, p. 95. This was as of 1758.
[136-1] Round Table, London, June 1913, p. 485.
[137-1] Arthur Murphy, The Works of Cornelius Tacitus, London, 1798, vol. iv. p. 35.
[138-1] Ency. Brit., vol. xxiii. p. 870: "The Russian empire stretches over a vast territory in E. Europe and N. Asia, with an area exceeding 8,660,000 sq. m., or one-sixth of the land surface of the globe. . . ."
[138-2] Cf. ante, p. 81, note 1.
[138-3] H. P. Kennard, comp. and ed., The Russian Yearbook for 1912, London, 1912, p. 46. This is as of 1910 census.
[139-1] Cf. ante, p. 81, note 1.
[141-1] Round Table, London, February 1911, p. 140.
[141-2] E. Backhouse and J.O.P. Bland, "Secret Annals of the Manchu Court," in Atlantic Monthly, Boston, December 1913, p.767.
[143-1] Cf. Round Table, London, May 1911, pp. 263-269.
[144-1] Cf. Springfield (Massachusetts) Weekly Republican, June 26, 1913; and Britannica Year Book, London, 1913, p. 941.
[145-1] Cf. Round Table, London, February 1911, pp. 123-153.
[145-2] Springfield (Massachusetts) Weekly Republican, November 27, 1913.
[146-1] Round Table, London, September 1913, p. 602.
[146-2] A. T. Mahan, "Japan among the Nations," a letter to the editor of The Times, in The Times Weekly Edition, London, June 27, 1913.
[152-1] C.A.W. Pownall, Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, Supplement, p. 51.
[152-2] Round Table, London, September 1913, p. 675.
[152-3] Statesman's Yearbook, London, 1913, p. 857: 1910 population of Germany 64,925,993, which is 310.4 per square mile.
[152-4] Germany 65,000,000; Japan 49,000,000; America 81,000,000; and all the seven Pan-Angle nations 141,000,000.
[153-1] Cf. ante, p. 132, note 1.
[155-1] Price Collier, Germany and the Germans, New York, 1913, p.190.
[155-2] Inaugural message of Governor David I. Walsh of Massachusetts to the State Legislature, January 8, 1914.
[155-3] Note the effort, December 1913, of the lower house of the German Parliament to make the Chancellor responsible not to the Emperor but to the lower house.
[158-1] Round Table, London, September 1913, p. 675.
[158-2] Ibid., May 1911, p. 244.
[158-3] Admiral Henderson in "Report to Australian Government," quoted in Round Table, London, May 1911, p. 258.
{160}
VII
TENDENCIES
THE future of the Pan-Angles must flow out of their past. The course it will take is indicated by our history if, following Seeley's admonition, the investigator turns "narrative into problems." "For in history everything depends upon turning narrative into problems. So long as you think of history as a mere chronological narrative, so long you are in the old literary groove which leads to no trustworthy knowledge, but only to that pompous conventional romancing of which all serious men are tired. Break the drowsy spell of narrative; ask yourself questions; set yourself problems; your mind will at once take up a new attitude; you will become an investigator; you will cease to be solemn and begin to be serious."[160-1]
The events of Pan-Angle history reveal three tendencies. These may be designated as: spreading, separating, and converging. They are to be noted both in the various national growths and in the collective growth of the entire civilization. Without discussing seriatim these three tendencies in each one of the seven nations, or the singular {161} similarities exemplified in the histories of the United States, Canada, Australia, and South Africa, consideration is here given only to the aggregate swing or movement in the whole civilization.
The spreading, starting with the days that saw the discovery of Newfoundland, continued and made the whole of North America Pan-Angle land. If the impulse had produced nothing more than this, its work would have been stupendous. Yet the spreading was so effective in other parts of the world that a large proportion of the Southern Hemisphere also became Pan-Angle land. To-day we control thirty per cent. of the world's land surface.[161-1]
The tendency to separate is stimulated whenever the imperative Pan-Angle need of exercising self-government is improperly checked. If this need is satisfied, separation is prevented. If the need is denied satisfaction, it grows more and more acute to the point of rupture.
The story of separations among us began with the failure to recognize this principle of local autonomy, and the many interferences which slowly exasperated the "American Englishmen" to rebel. Thus was destroyed the first Britannic Empire. Thus were embittered against each other the Americans and the British of three generations.
The American Revolution, aptly called the Imperial Civil War, started migrations. Loyalists from the thirteen new nations took Pan-Angle ideals into Canada. "It has been estimated, apparently on good authority, that in the two provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick {162} alone, the Loyalist emigrants and their families amounted to not less than 35,000 persons, and the total number of refugees cannot have been much less than 100,000."[162-1] This is the principal reason why Canada to-day is Pan-Angle rather than French.[162-2] It is the reason, too, why in some parts of Canada there is a feeling grounded on inherited prejudice against the United States.
So little were the causes of the phenomenon of separating understood by the rulers of the British Isles, that Canada, in turn, came to the verge of a revolt which "was in fact a war of nationality in the British Empire, though it wore the disguise of a war of liberty."[162-3] "The settlement of the difficulty was effected by means not very commonly in high favour. For once_ systematic thought was brought to bear upon politics_. . . . a young peer of considerable promise, Lord Durham, was sent out as Governor in 1838; he issued a famous report, due to the pen of Charles Buller, in which the Radical philosophers' principles were vigorously applied . . . and in 1840 Parliament was persuaded to give effect to the proposals made in the report; . . . the main point was that the Executive branch of government was brought under the control of the colonists. . . . The year 1841 is therefore the year of the inauguration of modern Colonial government."[162-4] The year 1841, therefore, inaugurated the {163} policies that were in time to check the separating tendency.
Not only was separation the desire of certain of the younger groups, but it was to some extent the desire and foregone conclusion of one group from which separation might take place. The attitude of the British public concerning those portions of the British world where English-speaking white men were claiming increasingly the right to govern themselves was in itself more than an invitation to these "colonies" to separate themselves from the Mother Country. Comparison was made to a tree whose ripened fruit in due season detaches itself from the parent stem. The loss of the richest area in whose conquest the British government ever shared had so impressed statesmen that such men as Gladstone could desire the separation from the British Isles of various Pan-Angle nations.
"During the years which preceded the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 there was in this country [British Isles] a general indifference to the colonial question which did not cease till long afterwards. . . . After the Cobden era came that of Mr. Gladstone, who was in his zenith in the sixties and as purely insular and deficient in the power of Imperial thought as Cobden had been in the forties."[163-1] "A governor, leaving to take charge of an Australian colony, was told even from the Colonial Office that he would probably be the last representative of the Crown sent out from Britain. This tendency of official thought found its culmination when, in 1866, a great journal frankly warned Canada, the {164} greatest of all the colonies, that it was time to prepare for the separation from the mother-land that must needs come."[164-1] "Mr. Goldwin Smith . . . in his . . . Canada and the Canadian Question, which may fairly be supposed to condense all that can be said in favor of the separation of Canada from the Empire, and generally in support of that form of national disintegration which is involved in the great colonies becoming separate states or annexing themselves to other nations . . . is almost the last conspicuous representative of a school of thinkers which twenty-five or thirty years ago appeared likely to dominate English opinion on colonial affairs."[164-2] Only slowly were learned the lessons of the American Revolution, which a British historian in 1883 could truthfully say, "We have tacitly agreed to mention as seldom as we can."[164-3]
The tendency to separation is latent in every Pan-Angle community. It is only when local and central authority are properly balanced that it is quieted. In one it has never been quieted. The story of Ireland it is unnecessary and inexpedient here to narrate.[164-4] An Englander calls it "the greatest and most lamentable failure of the Pax Britannica."[164-5] It is merely the proof, again and again repeated, of the inability of Pan-Angles {165} successfully to control the local affairs of other Pan-Angles. There is something in us, in our individualism, that forbids such success, and calls for separation, which leads to rebellion if opposed, or revolution if permitted.
The Irish for generations have been leaving Ireland. They leave embittered against England. That bitterness they spread broadcast in the six younger Pan-Angle nations. Everywhere in these six nations the Irish find home rule.[165-1] The bitterness against government, as government, wears off. The Irishman becomes a citizen of a new and proud nation—he becomes a self-conscious Pan-Angle. But the Irish Question is no nearer solution than before.
Contemporaneous with the separation sentiments among the Britannic peoples were the agitations in the United States that were to culminate in the secession movement. The dread of a strong central government had left in the southern portion of America a belief in state separateness that worked against the existence of a common government which, within the scope of its authority could make decisions binding on all its component lands and people. From the end of the French-Pan-Angle struggle to the beginning of the American Civil War, the century of 1763-1861, the course of separation ran almost unchecked.
As this separation tendency strengthened, the unity of the race and that of one of its component nations were exposed to disintegration. The outcome {166} appeared to forebode the end of Pan-Angle world control. A house divided against itself cannot stand. If this family was to split into national factions of increasingly smaller size, its end was apparent. Some other civilization would absorb the scattered bits of the once powerful race and another chapter of the struggles of successive civilizations would be concluded.
Certain American states, desiring to loosen the tie by which they were bound, seceded from the Union. Other states declared their faith in the federal principle and took their stand against separation. The issue was befogged in many minds by other points of contention. But "the question submitted to the arbitrament of war was the right of secession."[166-1] Those who looked on could see that if success attended the secession movement, Pan-Angles would have to begin again their search for the means of preserving the balance between local and central government. "My paramount object is to save the Union and not either to save or destroy slavery," wrote Lincoln in 1862.[166-2]
Wilson characterizes the three great men of that struggle in terms of the question at stake. Of Lincoln he says: "The whole country is summed up in him: the rude Western strength, tempered with shrewdness and a broad and humane wit; the Eastern conservatism, regardful of law and devoted to fixed standards of duty. He even understood {167} the South, as no other Northern man of his generation did. He respected, because he comprehended, though he could not hold, its view of the Constitution; he appreciated the inexorable compulsions of its past in respect of slavery; he would have secured it once more, and speedily if possible, in its right to self-government when the fight was fought out . . .
"Grant was Lincoln's suitable instrument, . . . A Western man, he had no thought of commonwealths politically separate, and was instinctively for the Union; a man of the common people, he deemed himself always an instrument, never a master, and did his work, though ruthlessly, without malice; a sturdy, hard-willed, taciturn man, a sort of Lincoln the Silent in thought and spirit."
On the opposite side Robert E. Lee fought "for a principle which is in a sense scarcely less American than the principle of Union. He represented the idea of the inherent—the essential—separateness of self-government. . . . Lee did not believe in secession, but he did believe in the local rootage of all government. This is at the bottom, no doubt, an English idea; but it has had a characteristic American development. It is the reverse side of the shield which bears upon its obverse the devices of the Union,[167-1] . . . Lee . . . could not conceive of the nation apart from the State: above {168} all, he could not live in the nation divorced from his neighbors. His own community should decide his political destiny and duty."[168-1]
The outcome of the American Civil War, to those in the Pan-Angle world who were looking forward to an end of separatings—and this included many in the British Isles,—gave hope and inspiration. It demonstrated the reality of American nationhood and, more important still, it encouraged the race on its path towards convergence. It made natural the Canadian Constitution, otherwise known as the British North America Act of 1867. It made reasonable the foundation in London of the Royal Colonial Institute in 1868, whose motto is "United Empire."[168-2] It made comprehensible the theses of such books as Dilke's Greater Britain, 1868, and Seeley's Expansion of England, 1883.[168-3] Later were to come the convergences of the Australian states in 1900 and the South African provinces in 1909. "For the idea of national unity the people of the United States twenty-five years ago made sacrifices of life and money without a parallel in modern history. No one now doubts that the end justified the enormous expenditure of national force. 'The Union must be preserved' was the pregnant sentence into which Lincoln condensed the national duty of the moment, and to maintain this principle he was able to concentrate the national energy for a supreme effort. The strong man who {169} saved the great republic from disruption takes his place, without a question, among the benefactors of mankind."[169-1]
Moreover, the outcome of the American Civil War tended to revise the attitudes of the British Isles and America toward each other. Up to this time, their attention had been fixed on the conditions of their separation. Hostility seized on various acts performed or permitted by the British government which, rightly or wrongly, the American people considered acts of unfriendliness. These, as the Americans realized, they were hardly in a position to resent while the Civil War was in progress, although at one time war was very nearly declared against the British Isles.[169-2] When the Civil War was over, retaliation might have been undertaken. The American government had at its disposal a navy of over seven hundred vessels, of which over seventy were ironclads. It had an army of over one million seasoned men. The opportunity suggested itself as a proper time to payoff American grudges against the British Isles by annexing Canada. This would have been holding Canada blamable for the doings of another nation. To the credit of the Pan-Angles, President Grant successfully opposed the scheme.[169-3] Not only did the decade 1860-1870 mark the rise of the converging movement in the United States and in Canada, but the same decade saw the culmination and abatement of separating tendencies between {170} the two great powers of the Pan-Angle group, the British Isles and America.
Since those days Pan-Angles have made progress in understanding the balance necessary between the separating and the converging impulses. Men have erred by emphasizing too strongly one side or the other. In America they cried out blindly for "centralization," or "states rights "—in ignorance that only by the complementary strengths of both central and local governments can our sort of people be governed in great masses. Among the Britannic peoples men favoured either British Isles ascendency, or colonial independence—ignorant that the first would as quickly destroy them as would the second. Either course would produce the independence of the younger nations and, through lack of strength to maintain that independence, the loss of it, possibly to some nation outside the Pan-Angle group. These American and Britannic extremists are now a diminishing minority.
The growth of the idea of complementary functions in co-ordinate (not superior and inferior) governments has been instanced by many developments in America. There was a time, many now alive can remember the days, when "centralization" and "states rights" were championed by opposing political parties. To-day it is recognized that the successful government of America rests on the proper use of both of these extremes. This is true, whether it refers to national versus state authorities, or state versus municipal authorities. With a strong central authority in America goes to-day greater recognition of the need of a concurrent local control. This local spirit has gone so far in {171} some of the American states that state legislatures have authorized cities to draw up their own charters.[171-1] Moreover, American political experience within the states has adhered in many cases to the theorem that, on such questions as local taxation and the sale of liquor, the smaller subdivisions of the state should decide their own usages.
Once it was assumed that the officers of the federal government in America should enlarge as much as possible their spheres of activity, even if they appeared to encroach upon state functions. It is now realized that the states should be encouraged to attend to their own affairs, and thus avoid increasing the burdens of the federal government. President Roosevelt in 1908 unofficially called together the American state governors to discuss "conservation," and since then yearly these state executives have met to discuss questions of state policy. These conferences not only tend to produce greater uniformity of Pan-Angle political action, but tend also to make that action the product of large experience. This Conference of the Governors[171-2] and other non-official bodies, the {172} American Bar Association among them, are now encouraged by public opinion to remedy, in whatever ways seem wise, undesirable discrepancies in the laws of the various states, not by seeking greater authority in the central government, but by agitating in the states themselves.
The extent of our progress is shown strikingly by the change in Pan-Angle sentiment between the wars of 1861-1865 and 1899-1902. In South Africa the race was spared any repetition of the humiliating political corruption of the "carpet-bag" era of the American "reconstruction."[172-1] We have learned that whether it is in the United States or South Africa, in Canada[172-2] or in Ireland, white men must be made into self-governing Pan-Angles. Rhodes recognized this when he said even while the war was in progress, ". . . you cannot govern South Africa by trampling on the Dutch."[172-3] The impulses toward local autonomy and those toward a common group unity must be correlated. To favour either at the expense of the other is to court disaster.
The spreading of the Pan-Angles is still going on, though in the multiplicity of affairs arising in {173} the places we already occupy we often overlook the pioneer work of the present. The causes for separating have been understood and extensively removed. The converging tendency is now in the ascendant. The political evolution that accompanies this convergence, though it seems slow to the impatient reformer, may, if understood and assisted by those who shape popular opinion, give Pan-Angles in the fulness of time an entity government.
This converging tendency of the race, Americans have seen with satisfaction in their own land. As far as they have been conversant with it, they have approved of it in Britannic lands. A Canadian wrote in 1892: "Among thinking native Americans I have found, as a rule, a genuine sympathy with the advocates of unity for British people, a sympathy perfectly natural in a nation which has suffered and sacrificed so much as the people of the United States have for a similar object."[173-1] Since our knowledge of each other has grown in twenty odd years this might to-day be expressed even more strongly. Moreover, "English people," the same writer testifies, "now understand and respect the motives which actuated the resolute and successful struggle of the people of the United States against disruption."[173-2]
There is to-day a great drawing together of the whole Pan-Angle race. The desires of Franklin and his supporters are nearing realization. The {174} errors which led to our separations have passed into the race experience. We can all profit by them. We have all profited by them. The tendency to convergence was never wholly in operative. It survived the wrench of the American Revolution. Lord Shelburne, in conducting the British side of the peace negotiations of 1783, held to the ideal of restoring Pan-Angle unity, and thereafter worked for it in Parliament, hoping "that this would have been the beginning of the great Anglo-Saxon federation of which Chatham had dreamed; . . ."[174-1]
The power of this impulse drawing us together is evidenced in the peace that has endured among us. The century closing December 24, 1914, stands as witness. Within our whole civilization, this period has chronicled only two wars of white men on Pan-Angle soil—1861-1865 and 1899-1902. These were devastating and deeply to be regretted. They remind us that peace is not to be taken for granted. Between the two entirely independent sections of the Pan-Angles, and these are at the same time the most populous, no conflict of interests has been allowed to develop into war. Differences of opinion have arisen, as was inevitable. They have been settled through the exercise of forbearance, self-control, and concession, without recourse to arms.
Needless to try to apportion the credit between the two nations. Canadians have sometimes felt {175} that their interests were being sacrificed on the altar of British-American friendship. "Those who study the history of the questions which have arisen from time to time since the Peace of 1813 between this country [British Isles] and the United States, can hardly fail to be struck by a difference in the habitual attitude of the two Powers. Great Britain has always been pliable as to such questions; having indeed every motive, both of sentiment and of interest, for being and remaining on the best terms possible with the United States."[175-1] Another Britannic critic not only denies that the British negotiators have been pliable, but claims that as envoys on Canada-America disputes they have been of a cleverness at least equal to that of the Americans.[175-2]
Whoever may have appreciated it more keenly, the fact is now evident that the community of interests which embraces all Pan-Angles is an affair of transcending importance. Our great men have understood this and given it repeated expression. Mr. Joseph Chamberlain said at Toronto in 1897: "But I should think our patriotism was dwarfed and stunted indeed if it did not embrace the Greater Britain beyond the seas; if it did not include the young and vigorous nations carrying throughout the globe the knowledge of the English tongue and the English love of liberty and law; and, gentlemen, with {176} those feelings I refuse to think or speak of the United States of America as a foreign nation. We are all of the same race and blood. I refuse to make any distinction between the interests of Englishmen in England, in Canada, and in the United States."[176-1] An Australian in 1912 wrote: "British interests in India or the East Indies would not be attacked; if there were a large Australian fleet. The problems of defence in Canada, South Africa, Egypt, and United States [sic] would be distinctly easier with such a fleet."[176-2] Note that he makes no distinction which sets the United States aside from other Pan-Angles. Lord Bryce—and no American is more highly esteemed in the United States than he,—[176-3] speaking in London in 1913, said: "Returning hither from America, I have two things to say to the British Pilgrims gathered here as friends of the American people. One is that you must not take too seriously the lurid pictures of American life drawn in some organs of the European press. In Washington I used to be struck by the dark view which the press news from England conveyed of British events and conditions, a view which I knew to be misleading. Here the same thing happens. Cable messages and {177} the vivid pens of correspondents inevitably heighten the colour. My other message is to assure you that the friendship you entertain for the people of the United States is reciprocated by them far more universally and heartily than ever before. There is a friendship of governments and a friendship of nations. The former may shift with the shifting of material interests or be affected by the relations of each power with other powers. But the latter rests on solid and permanent foundations. With our two peoples it is based on a community of speech, of literature, of institutions, of beliefs, of traditions from the past, of ideals for the future. In all these things the British and American peoples are closer than any two other peoples can be. Nature and history have meant them to be friends."[177-1]
Against this spirit of amity not a dissenting voice is raised. We rejoice in the peace of the years behind us and in the good feeling of the era at hand. We seek some means to perpetuate them.
Political good feeling in its different degrees takes, according to Pan-Angle experience, three forms. These so merge, that it is difficult at times to define in terms of them. They may be known for purpose of study as: friendship, alliance, and common government.
The relations between England and its American colonies started in the friendship stage. Later developed a co-operation that can be fairly called {178} alliance. In the French-Pan-Angle struggle for North America, the colonies contributed men and money, as did Great Britain. Together they won much of the territory now the United States and all that is now Canada. Together they did more than this. "The Seven Years War made England what she is. It crippled the commerce of her rival, ruined France in two continents, and blighted her as a colonial power. It gave England the control of the seas and the mastery of North America and India, made her the first of commercial nations, and prepared that vast colonial system that has planted new Englands in every part of the globe."[178-1] Pownall, during his term as governor, saw Massachusetts raise at the requisition of the Crown not the 2300 men asked for, but 7000.[178-2] "Owners of property were paying in taxes two-thirds of their incomes."[178-3] Yet their legislature in 1759 voted funds for a monument to Lord Howe, who had fallen the previous summer at Ticonderoga. It stands in Westminster Abbey[178-4] to-day, a memorial as well of the men whose "affection to the mother country . . . zeal for the service," Pownall knew from experience.[178-5] Speaking in the British House of Commons, of which he was a member 1768-1780, {179} he describes their attitude during the Seven Years War. In case of a French invasion of England at that time, he testifies: "Those New England men would have been ready to come over at their own expense to the assistance of their native country—as they always hold England to be."[179-1]
After the pressure of war was removed, the alliance, instead of being carried to the stage of common government, was neglected. Friendship and co-operation became things of the past, and separation took place. Many then thought that this might have been avoided. Governor Pownall, for one, knew that there was "a certain good temper and right spirit which, if observed on both sides, might bring these matters of dispute to such a settlement as political truth and liberty are best established upon."[179-2] The "certain good temper" did not then prevail. To-day, in 1914, we see the advantage of acting in the "right spirit" which may bring all our affairs to such a settlement as is conducive to the welfare of all Pan-Angles.
The United States in itself shows, perhaps most completely, the detailed history of the political growth of groups of Pan-Angles through the three stages. The defensive alliance of the American colonies fell apart after the successful outcome of the French War. The friendship between the thirteen nations survived, and common necessity with a common cause[179-3] produced the alliance {180} which made successful the American Revolution. Thereafter came the critical period of American history.[180-1] The first attempt at common government in 1781 took the form of a strengthened alliance and failed, because alliance was at this juncture inadequate. Undaunted, the Americans framed another constitution for the potential nation. Here at last was a common government.
It has survived so long that to-day the United States is the oldest republic in the world. It has endured the strain of both foreign and civil wars. It has permitted the assimilation of vast hordes of white people, who now cherish this government as their own. This government expresses the will of eighty-one millions of whites—a majority of the English-speaking people of the world.[180-2]
Of the six Britannic nations, Canada, Australia, and South Africa have travelled through friendship and alliance to common government. Canada, apparently divided by two languages, was the first thus to establish its nationhood. Australia was the second. More recently still, South Africa, in spite of a diversity of tongues, achieved the same result.[180-3]
{181}
There are those who maintain that the six Britannic nations have not yet arrived at the alliance stage. "Everything hangs on sentiment, influence, and management."[181-1] Some recommend that an alliance should be definitely entered into.[181-2] Yet while it is true that the five younger Britannic entities are "nations, with a life, a pride, a consciousness of their own, with separate, divergent, and in some cases indeed conflicting interests,"[181-3] it seems also true that a friendly alliance does exist among them and between them and the British Isles.
It is an alliance de facto if not de jure, its terms being unwritten, unstated, and unknown. In the Colonial Conference of 1902, "To Sir Wilfrid Laurier's famous challenge, 'If you want our aid, call us to your councils,' the Colonial Secretary [Chamberlain] made an emphatic response. 'Gentlemen, we do want your aid. We do want your assistance in the administration of the vast Empire which is yours as well as ours. The weary Titan staggers under the too vast orb of his fate. We have borne the burden for many years. We think it time that our children should assist us to support it, and whenever you make the request to us, be very sure that we shall hasten gladly to call you to our councils.'"[181-4] In the South African {182} War, and more recently in their efforts in behalf of greater naval strength, the six nations behaved as allies affording inspiring examples of what they can and may again do. Certainly the political good feeling between the Britannic nations cannot be said to have progressed further than to the alliance stage, since "any political arrangement in which powers are withheld, or granted upon terms, or are subject to revision at the will of any member of the confederacy, is not a real union, but only an alliance."[182-1]
Between the United States and the British Isles are treaties that bind them into an extraordinarily close alliance—treaties which are the strongest written expressions of international goodwill.[182-2] On the even closer "understanding" between the two nations, so that they are found acting in concert in every part of the globe, it is unnecessary to dwell.
But between the United States and the younger Britannic nations, what is the relation? They are undoubtedly friendly, but where is the formal evidence of such friendliness? The five younger nations can hardly be considered partners to the alliance between the United States and the British Isles, as in making this alliance these five had no share. To form an alliance between the United States and the Britannic power, inclusive of the six Britannic nations, is now impossible, because such {183} a Britannic political entity able to ratify treaties is non-existent. Postulating an alliance among all the Britannic nations, the United States through its alliance with the British Isles may perhaps be considered as allied to the allies of its ally. As we are now organized, this is as far as we have been able to progress. It is just beyond the friendship stage.
The seven Pan-Angle nations are to-day bound together by friendship and, in some cases, alliance. They are united by sentiment only, whether it be unwritten or written. At this stage many of our groups have found themselves in the past. It has held for them two possibilities. Sentiment was the bond between Pan-Angles after the French War which ended in 1763. The bond failed to hold and separation followed. Sentiment in alliance form was tried in the Articles of Confederation in 1781. It failed; and on its ruins was built a common government. It is of no moment that sentiment in the first case was unwritten, and in the second case, written. Sentiment is not government. Need other cases of failure be mentioned? It is for us to determine whether, when our present relationships change, they give way to separation and weakness, or develop by convergence into the strength of a common government. The motto of our youngest nation points out the hope of our future, "Ex unitate vires."
[160-1] J.R. Seeley, The Expansion of England, London, 1883, pp.174-175.
[161-1] Cf. ante, p. 16.
[162-1] Jones, History of New York, ii. pp. 259,268,500,509, quoted by G. F. Parkin, Imperial Federation, London, 1892, note, p. 124.
[162-2] Cf. G. R. Parkin, Imperial Federation, London, 1892, pp. 127, 153.
[162-3] J. R. Seeley, The Expansion of England, London, 1883, p. 48.
[162-4] Alfred Caldecott, English Colonization and Empire, London, 1891, pp. 131-133.
[163-1] C.A.W. Pownall, Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, Supplement, pp. 9, 10.
[164-1] G.R. Parkin, Imperial Federation, London, 1892, p. 8.
[164-2] Ibid., p. 163.
[164-3] J.R. Seeley, The Expansion of England, London, 1883, p. 22.
[164-4] For a general account of Ireland in this connection, see Price Collier, England and the English, London, 1911, pp. 230-262; and for a constitutional discussion, Cf. Round Table, London, December 1913, pp. 1-67.
[164-5] H.S. Perris, Pax Britannica, London, 1913, p. 139.
[165-1] As Home Rule, like other political terms, has been used to denote many theorems, its meaning in any statement depends somewhat on the particular instance.
[166-1] W.H. Taft, Popular Government, New Haven, Connecticut, 1913, p. 137.
[166-2] Ency. Brit., vol. xxiii. p. 178, Letter of Abraham Lincoln to Horace Greeley, August 1862.
[167-1] Cf. W.H. Taft, Popular Government, New Haven, Connecticut, 1913, p.151: "It is essential . . . in the life of our dual government that the power and functions of the State governments be maintained in all the fulness that they were intended to have by the framers of the Constitution."
[168-1] Woodrow Wilson, Mere Literature, Boston, 1900, pp. 208-210.
[168-2] United Empire is also the title of the magazine published monthly by the Royal Colonial Institute, London.
[168-3] C. W. Dilke, Greater Britain, London, 1868; J. R. Seeley, The Expansion of England, London, 1883.
[169-1] G. R. Parkin, Imperial Federation, London, 1892, p. 25.
[169-2] According to H.C. Lodge—One Hundred Years of Peace, New York, 1913, p.108—September 3, 1863, was the crucial day.
[169-3] Ibid., pp. 118-119.
[171-1] Cf. Ency. Brit., vol. xxvii. p. 651.
[171-2] The Outlook, New York, December 21, 1912, p. 843: "The first Governors' Conference was called by President Roosevelt in 1908. It met at the White House to consider the subject of Conservation. So immediately evident was the desirability of co-operation that Governor Willson, of Kentucky, sprang to his feet at the close of one of the sessions and said, 'Gentlemen, let me detain you a moment.' He went to the platform and there unfolded a plan for a Conference of the Governors, to be called by themselves. This was held at Washington in 1909. The third meeting of the Governors occurred at Frankfort, Kentucky, Governor Willson's own capital, in 1911, . . . The Governors' Conference is apparently becoming something of a fixture in our political life."
[172-1] Ency. Brit., vol. xxv. pp. 480-481: Peace signed at Pretoria, May 31, 1902; self-government decreed, December 12, 1906; elections held in Transvaal, February 1907.
[172-2] Cf. Alfred Caldecott, English Colonization and Empire, London, 1891, p. 130: "Canada was a conquered possession, not a settlement, it is true; but the attempt to treat it as a conquest nearly ended in another catastrophe."
[172-3] W.T. Stead, The Last Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes, London, 1902, p. 113.
[173-1] G. R. Parkin, Imperial Federation, London, 1892, p. 253.
[173-2] Ibid., p. 254.
[174-1] Round Table, London, December 1913, p. 112. As to Chatham's plans for both Irish and American co-operation in Pan-Angle government, see A. L. Burt, Imperial Architects, Oxford, 1913, pp. 28-32.
[175-1] Roundell Palmer, Earl of Selborne, Memorials: Part II., Personal and Political, London, 1898, vol. i. p. 202.
[175-2] Round Table, London, December 1913, pp. 106-122. This article should amuse all Pan-Angles by its fraternal frankness in describing the diplomacy of both British and American actors in these dramas. It also throws light on the usages of so-called "international arbitration."
[176-1] Mr. Chamberlain at Toronto, December 30, 1897, quoted by M. Victor BÉrard, British Imperialism and Commercial Supremacy, trans. H. W. Foskett, London, 1906, p. 200.
[176-2] Round Table, London, September 1912, p. 722.
[176-3] At a farewell dinner given to Mr. Bryce in New York City, former American Ambassador to the British Isles Joseph H. Choate turned to the guest of honour and stated: "England has sent, will send, many Ambassadors, but there's only one Bryce in the whole list. The American people from the Atlantic to the Pacific love and honour you, sir." See The Outlook, New York, May 10, 1913, p. 80.
[177-1] Mr. Bryce before the Pilgrims Club in London, November 6, 1913, quoted by Springfield (Massachusetts) Weekly Republican, November 7, 1913.
[178-1] Francis Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, London, 1884, vol. i. p.3.
[178-2] C.A.W. Pownall, Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, p. 157.
[178-3] Ibid., p. 95. This is as of 1758.
[178-4] Cf. ibid., p. 125. The monument is in the Belfry Tower, the north aisle of nave. Cf. Baedeker's London, 1911, p. 217. It was Lord Howe's brother, Sir William Howe, who on March 17, 1776, evacuated Boston to abandon the city to these same American Englishmen—now rebels.
[178-5] C.A.W. Pownall, Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, p. 157.
[179-1] C.A.W. Pownall, Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, p. 232.
[179-2] Ibid., p. 202.
[179-3] Woodrow Wilson, The State, 1897, rev. ed., Boston, 1911, p. 453: "Despite very considerable outward differences of social condition and many apparent divergencies of interest as between colony and colony, they one and all wanted the same revolution. . . . They did not so much make a common cause as have a common cause from the first."
[180-1] See John Fiske, The Critical Period of American History, 1788-1789, Boston, 1898.
[180-2] Cf. ante, p. 81, note 1.
[180-3] P. A. Molteno's A Federal South Africa, London, 1896, written more than three years before the Boer War, compares the then condition of South Africa with the condition of the American thirteen nations in the days covered by Fiske's The Critical Period of American History, contains a prophecy now fulfilled, and is a valuable comment on many of the needs of the Pan-Angle world of to-day.
[181-1] F. S. Oliver, Alexander Hamilton: An Essay on American Union, London, 1906, p. 447.
[181-2] Richard Jebb, The Britannic Question, London, 1913.
[181-3] Lord Milner, December 14, 1906, at Conservative Club, Manchester, England, in Lord Milner, The Nation and the Empire, London, 1913, p. 142.
[181-4] Richard Jebb, Studies in Colonial Nationalism, London, 1905, p.138.
[182-1] F. S. Oliver, Alexander Hamilton: An Essay on American Union, London, 1906, p. 452.
[182-2] For a history of the General Arbitration Treaty of 1911 between America and the British Isles and its full text as proposed and as ratified, see H.S. Perris, Pax Britannica, London, 1913, pp. 285-298, 801-807.
{184}
VIII
A COMMON GOVERNMENT
WHO, first of all, dreamed of closer union between England (or Great Britain) and its colonies we do not know. As early as 1652 there came from Barbados a suggestion. It was in no way followed up. Colonel Thomas Modyford "desires, although it may seem immodest, that two representatives should be chosen by the island to sit and vote in the English parliament."[184-1]
In the following century Benjamin Franklin devised a scheme of union and laboured to commend it to the makers of Pan-Angle history. In June 1754 he attended a conference of eleven of the colonies met at Albany to consider defence against the Indians. That matter disposed of, Franklin submitted a plan for the union of the {185} colonies.[185-1] Later in the year he wrote as follows to Shirley, Royal Governor of Massachusetts: "Since the conversation your Excellency was pleased to honor me with, on the subject of uniting the colonies more intimately with Great Britain, by allowing them representatives in Parliament, I have something further considered that matter, and am of opinion that such a union would be very acceptable to the colonies, provided they had a reasonable number of representatives allowed them; . . .
"I should hope, too, that by such a union the people of Great Britain and the people of the colonies would learn to consider themselves as not belonging to different communities with different interests, but to one community with one interest; which I imagine would contribute to strengthen the whole, and greatly lessen the danger of future separations. . . .
"Now, I look on the colonies as so many countries gained to Great Britain, and more advantageous to it than if they had been gained out of the seas around its coasts and joined to its lands; . . . and since they are all included in the British empire, which has only extended itself by their means, and the strength and wealth of the parts are the strength and wealth of the whole, what imports it to the general state whether a merchant, a smith, or a hatter grows rich in Old or New England? . . . And if there be any difference, those who have most contributed to enlarge Britain's empire and commerce, increase her strength, her wealth, and {186} the numbers of her people, at the risk of their own lives and private fortunes in new and strange countries, methinks ought rather to expect some preference."[186-1]
The Albany scheme failed of adoption. The race was not ripe for Franklin's foresight.[186-2] Years afterwards he wrote: "The different and contrary reasons of dislike to my plan make me suspect that it was really the true medium; and I am still of opinion that it would have been happy for both sides if it had been adopted. The Colonies so united would have been sufficiently strong to have defended themselves. There would then have been no need of troops from England. Of course, the consequent pretext for taxing America and the bloody contest it occasioned would have been avoided. But such mistakes are not new; history is full of the errors of states and princes. Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom but forced by the occasion."[186-3]
{187}
But Franklin's idea did not die. Thomas Pownall, just out from England, a man later appointed Downing Street's Governor of Massachusetts, attended the Albany Colonial Conference. He heard the deliberations and talked with the commissioners and, as he himself wrote later, then "first conceived the idea and saw the necessity of a general British union."[187-1] The acquaintance he made there with Franklin grew into closest friendship. Both men wrote in favour of colonial representation;[187-2] and present in many ways an adequate epitome of the best thought of each branch of their civilization.
Pownall recognized that the race would outgrow its London capital. In 1766 he wrote that representatives of the colonies, if apportioned according to population, would in time outnumber those of Great Britain, and "the centre of power instead of remaining fixed as it is now in Great Britain will, as the magnitude and interest of the colonies increases, be drawn out from these islands by the same laws of nature, analogous in all cases, by which the centre of gravity, now near the face of the sun, would, by an increase of the quantity of {188} matter in the planets, be drawn out beyond that surface."[188-1] This result, he thought, might be guarded against by stipulating that the colonial members were always to come to England.[188-2] A present-day Englander makes no such stipulation. Lord Milner in Johannesburg in 1904 stated: "I am an Imperialist out-and-out—and by an Imperialist I don't mean that which is commonly supposed to be indicated by the word. It is not the domination of Great Britain over the other parts of the Empire that is in my mind when I call myself an Imperialist out-and-out. I am an Englishman, but I am an Imperialist more than an Englishman, and I am prepared to see the Federal Council of the Empire sitting in Ottawa, in Sydney, in South Africa—sitting anywhere within the Empire—if in the great future we can only all hold together."[188-3]
About another objection Pownall consulted Franklin. "He had been told that if the colonists were to pay the same taxes as people in England and, like them, to send members to Parliament, equal powers of trade must be conceded. When that was done the Atlantic commerce might afterwards centre in New York or Boston, and power be transferred there from England. 'Which consequence, however it may suit a citizen of the world, must be folly and madness to a Briton.' {189} So exclaimed the Englishman who wrote to his colonial friend for a solution of the difficulty. The American-born Franklin took quite another view. He saw no difficulty at all; he replied that the fallacy lay in supposing that gain to a British Colony was loss to Britain. He maintained that the whole Empire gained if any part of it developed a particular trade, and he predicted that without a complete union, by which full and equal rights were given, the existing system of government could not long be retained. Assuming Pownall's premises to be correct he inquired, 'which is best—to have a total separation or a change of the seat of government?'"[189-1]
Soon it was too late to answer Franklin's question. A separation took place, and two supreme governments divided the responsibility of safe-guarding the English-speaking whites. As time passed, each portion of the Pan-Angles founded colonies. The American colonies were held to the American "home" states by means of a federal government The British Isles colonies have, in some instances, federated among themselves, so that to-day the Britannic power consists of six nations. And now all seven nations are appreciating how superficial are these political separations. To-day we have seven central seats of government, and after a century of peace, a new question arises—whether we should re-form our relations.
One hundred and twenty-three years after Franklin and Pownall so discussed the migration of the seat of government of the English-speaking {190} peoples, another Colonial and another Englander corresponded on the same subject. Cecil John Rhodes wrote to William T. Stead: "What an awful thought it is that if we had not lost America, or if even now we could arrange with the present members of the United States Assembly and our House of Commons, the peace of the world is secured for all eternity! We could hold your federal parliament five years at Washington and five at London."[190-1] Stead has recorded a conversation of the same year in which Rhodes "expressed his readiness to adopt the course from which he had at first recoiled—viz. that of securing the unity of the English-speaking race by consenting to the absorption of the British Empire in the American Union if it could not be secured in any other way. In his first dream he clung passionately to the idea of British ascendancy—this was in 1877—in the English-speaking union of which he then thought John Bull was to be the predominant partner. But in 1891, abandoning in no whit his devotion to his own country, he expressed his deliberate conviction that English-speaking reunion was so great an end in itself as to justify even the sacrifice of the monarchical features and isolated existence of the British Empire . . . and from that moment the ideal of English-speaking reunion assumed its natural and final place as the centre of his political aspirations."[190-2]
As Franklin and Pownall foresaw, the race {191} centre moved out of England. Emerson in 1856 realized that in America "is the seat and centre of the British race,"[191-1] a statement strengthened since by the growth of Canada. North America is now the centre of Pan-Angle civilization, and Canada is the key of the Britannic world.
The impulse to closer union has never been long quiescent. It has been active again and again in the minds of men. A century after Franklin presented his Albany plan for the race, Joseph Howe "looked upon the attainment of complete independence of local government in the colonies as but a stepping-stone to the assertion of still higher national rights, to the acceptance of still higher responsibilities; to some form of substantial union among British people, based on considerations of equal citizenship and the defence of common interests. As far back as 1854 he delivered in the Nova Scotia Legislature an address, since published . . . under the name of the 'Organization of the Empire' which … embodies most of what has since been said by the advocates of national unity. Twelve years later, when on a visit to England, he published in pamphlet form an essay bearing the same title, and giving his more fully matured views upon the question. If the genesis and enunciation of the Imperial Federation idea in its modern form is to be credited to anyone, it must be assigned to Joseph Howe for this early and comprehensive statement of the main issues involved. The study of the utterances of this great colonist, this champion of colonial rights, may be {192} commended to those shallow critics who profess to believe that the proposal for national unity is an outcome of Imperial selfishness, and that its operation would tend to cramp colonial development."[192-1]
Franklin and Pownall wrote in the days when the race knew only the English method of integration—"absorptive, incorporative."[192-2] The various American colonies had been experimenting in effecting combinations on another principle, but their successes had hardly yet proved that the same principle in extended form could be applied to the desired union between all the governments of the English-speaking race. In 1787 was drawn up the Constitution of the United States of America, and the federal method of integration was put definitely to trial. In 1801 Ireland was united to Great Britain, but not by federation. Irish members were admitted to the Parliament of the United Kingdom much after the manner in which Franklin had suggested that American members should be admitted. In the century or more since has been proved the value of federation which means neither confederation[192-3] of groups bound by treaties whereby no adequate affirmative policy or common government would be possible, nor absorption whereby local self-government would be obscured or blotted out, but an expedient combining both local freedom and central strength. The South African Colonial writing to the {193} Englander who shared his vision takes for granted a "federal parliament."
The forms Pan-Angle governments take are now two. One is the simple unitary form in which the central government is supreme within the sanction of the will of the voters expressed at the polls, any other government being a subordinate, i.e. a municipal government. The other form is not unitary, and the central government is supreme in the exercise of certain authority only, other governments being in all else supreme and autonomous partners.
The states of America, for example, and those of Australia are unitary in government. Of the seven Pan-Angle nations, three, Newfoundland, New Zealand, and the British Isles, are unitary, the central government in each being supreme over every part and in every respect.
Of the non-unitary governments there are four: the United States, Canada, Australia, and South Africa. By an accident of time and place America was the first to grapple with the problems which called for such a government. Thirteen states independent of each other and of any outside power found themselves in danger from inter-state contentions and external aggressions. Building for their very lives, they devised a form of government which has been called federal. In it each state kept most of its sovereign powers, but delegated certain others of them to a central legislature. The federation of the six Australian states followed much the same lines. In Canada and South Africa the states (in both cases called provinces) have retained less of their local autonomy. {194} The central government in the former may with some legislative difficulty and delay assume any power it desires, while in the latter unrestricted power has been lodged from the beginning in the central government. In neither of these two nations, however, has the central government assumed the exercise of its full possible power. In both it co-exists at present with the provincial governments after a federal manner, obtaining thus the advantages of federation.
For comparatively restricted areas within which problems and opinions are tolerably uniform, a unitary government satisfies Pan-Angles. States and provinces are such areas. Newfoundland and New Zealand are at present such areas. In Newfoundland the population is very sparse and the local variations are slight. It will be many years probably before there arises a need and a desire for devolution[194-1] of power from the present legislature. In New Zealand conditions are not so uniform, and although a unitary government seems satisfactory to-day, the time may readily be imagined when a denser population and conflicting interests of different sections of the country may make feasible local legislatures, each, for its allotted tasks, supreme. The only attempt so far towards that end originated outside of New Zealand and was abandoned before being put into practice.[194-2]
{195}
The unitary method of government has never proved itself able successfully to integrate areas divided from each other by distance or interests. It failed to hold together the first Britannic growth; it has been unable to bring into unity the second Britannic growth; it is acknowledged to be inadequate for such a task. Its weaknesses are evident in the British Isles. The British Isles, although no larger than many states and provinces, is composed of several sections divided by history, prejudice, and interest. These are now united into one government, in which one central legislature is supreme. Questions which may affect some one section alone are decided by the representatives of the country at large who are possibly both uninterested and uninformed. Scottish education, Welsh Church, and Irish land bills are dependent on the will of the whole British Isles,[195-1] and a multitude of strictly local affairs must wait for the attention of Parliament, since no other body has power to deal with them.
The results of this condition are two: first, a congestion of business in Parliament incompatible {196} with efficient and intelligent action; and, second, the violation of the principles of self-government producing discord between the several sections of the country. No one questions that Parliament to-day labours under the terrible disadvantage of having more to do than it possibly can accomplish. Needed and uncontended legislation is delayed for years, and such bills as are passed receive often inadequate consideration.[196-1] Though unity has up to now been preserved, the lack of local self-government has produced discords always more or less active. At times these have threatened to break out into violent disruption.
To overcome these weaknesses—to relieve the burdens of Parliament and to check the tendency to separation—many thinkers and patriots in the British Isles are convinced that some devolution of power to local legislatures cannot be long delayed.[196-2] There is talk of Irish, Scottish, and Welsh home rule. The present control of British Isles affairs by the Irish members of the House of Commons is teaching the desirability of home rule for England. Some would re-form the country into still smaller governmental sections. In the operation of any such plan a central Parliament is to be in control of certain nation-wide interests, among which would be foreign affairs and the army and navy.
{197}
"Now, what the Federalist is anxious to set up in the United Kingdom is an arrangement upon the Canadian model, in which there will be a supreme and sovereign Parliament, as at present, for the United Kingdom, and under it a certain number of subordinate parliaments, to attend to local and domestic legislation and administration. . . . No Federalist has ever suggested that Ireland should be turned into a Canada, although this accusation has occasionally been made against him by persons who have read his proposals carelessly, and have, accordingly, misunderstood their nature."[197-1]
A British Cabinet Minister, speaking in Dundee on October 9, 1913, stated: "I am perhaps at an unfortunate age for making a prophecy. I am ceasing to belong to the young men who dream dreams, and I have not yet joined the ranks of the old men who see visions; still I will run the risk of prophecy and tell you that the day will most certainly come—many of you will live to see it—when a federal system will be established in these Islands which will give Wales and Scotland the control within proper limits of their own Welsh and Scottish affairs, which will free the Imperial Parliament from the great congestion of business by which it is now pressed, and which will redound and conduce to the contentment and well-being of all our people."[197-2]
When some such re-formation of government is adopted by the British Isles, it will only be utilizing {198} the fruits of the race's experience in other parts of our civilization.
If the first steps to this "home rule all round" aimed at in the present (1914) legislation regarding Ireland prove defective, in that it concedes what is not needed, and denies what is needed, it is because the British Isles has not taken to heart the inwardness of the federal idea. Lord Dunraven pointed this out when he said that "there were only two principles on which Home Rule could be founded—the Federal system or absolute independence. The present Bill applied to neither and he could recognize in it no basis of settlement."[198-1] In the following resolution, he indicated how the question of "home rule all round" should be attacked: ". . .'The best means of arriving at a settlement by consent of the Irish political question and of the constitutional difficulties connected with it, and of securing the harmonious working of any system of self-government in Ireland and the permanency of friendly relations between the two islands is to be found in a convention, or conference, representative of all nationalities and parties in the United Kingdom, and . . . it is the duty of his Majesty's Government to take the initiative in inviting such convention or conference.'"[198-2] But the fact that a majority of the British Parliament has gone so far as to advocate any form of Home Rule is evidence of a sincere effort to meet the conditions of Pan-Angle individualism where longest suppressed, {199} and thus hasten the harmonious self-government of the British Isles.
Franklin, when he wrote to Shirley[199-1] in 1754 about the need of colonial representation to the British Parliament in London, may or may not have realized how far the gaining of that desire would fail to satisfy. His plan would not have produced a federal government for Pan-Angles. It would have created a larger unitary government than then existed. There would not have been co-ordinated spheres of governmental control. The local affairs of Pennsylvania and England, of Scotland and New York, would together have been in the hands of a Parliament composed of representatives elected from the nation at large. This would have been unacceptable to the people of England, Pennsylvania, Scotland, and New York. They would have asked for something more. A lesson can be drawn from this by those who to-day urge Australian or Canadian representation in the present British Isles Parliament. Such representation would subject Britishers to outside control of their local problems, just as to-day Englanders are affected by Irish representatives voting on local problems of England. Conversely, it would mean a continued interference in Australian and Canadian local problems by the local representatives of the British Isles—the very thing the peoples of the five new nations have already taken appropriate steps to obviate. The Irish question demonstrates that representation alone is not enough for Pan-Angles. The Irish are more than {200} fairly represented in Parliament. Still they clamour for more. That something more desired by all Pan-Angles is local autonomy.
To representation in a central legislature must be added the local control of local questions so dear to Pan-Angle individualism. This is what federalism accomplishes.[200-1] "Our Federal system is the only form of popular government that would be possible in a country like ours, with an enormous territory and 100,000,000 population. . . . But for this safety valve by which people of one State can have such State government as they choose, we would never be able to keep the union of all the people so harmonious as we now have."[200-2] "The growth of the United States has widened political horizons. It has proved that immense territorial extent is not incompatible, under modern conditions, with that representative system of popular government which had its birth and development in England, and its most notable adaptation in America. It has shown that the spread of a nation over vast areas, including widely-separated states with diverse interests, need not prevent it from becoming strongly bound together in a political organism which combines {201} the advantages of national greatness and unity of purpose with jealously guarded freedom of local self-government."[201-1]
The indefinite governmental relationships between the Britannic nations are to-day satisfactory to no one. Britannic closer union forms the thesis of much writing and speech making and the subject of much earnest study.[201-2] That the demands of the situation can be met adequately only by federation seems evident to many. This thought is thus expressed by Milner: "If, as I fervently hope, the present loose association of the self-governing states of the Empire grows in time into a regular partnership, it can only be, as it seems to me, by the development of a new organ of government representative of them all, and dealing exclusively with matters of common interest. It would only heighten confusion to bring representatives of the Dominions into the House of Commons. And if, as I think everyone would admit, it is impracticable to bring them into the House of Commons, they would certainly say, 'Thank you for nothing' if we were to offer them a few seats in the House of Lords."[201-3]
Mr. Winston Churchill continued in his speech at Dundee: "I tell you further that that system when erected and established will in itself be only the forerunner and nucleus of a general scheme of Imperial federation which will gather together in {202} one indissoluble circle the British people here and beyond the seas."[202-1] Rhodes wrote over twenty years ago: "I will frankly add that my interest in the Irish question has been heightened by the fact that in it I see the possibility of the commencement of changes which will eventually mould and weld together all parts of the British Empire.
"The English are a conservative people, and like to move slowly, and, as it were, experimentally. At present there can be no doubt that the time of Parliament is overcrowded with the discussion of trivial and local affairs. Imperial matters have to stand their chance of a hearing alongside of railway and tram bills. Evidently it must be a function of modern legislation to delegate an enormous number of questions which now occupy the time of Parliament, . . .
"But side by side with the tendency of decentralisation for local affairs, there is growing up a feeling for the necessity of greater union in Imperial matters. . . ."[202-2]
Not alone the federation of the Britannic nations, but the federation of the whole Pan-Angle people, {203} is the end to be sought. Behind Rhodes' "greater union in Imperial matters" lay his vision of a common government over all English-speaking people.[203-1] If we are to preserve our civilization and its benefits to our individual citizens, we must avoid frictions among ourselves and take a united stand before the world. Only a common government will ensure this.
The four federations have been the results of similar practical impulses. The separate states and provinces realized their mutual need of co-operation to avoid conflict among themselves and to withstand enemies, actual or possible, from without. In some cases one, in some cases the other, of these arguments was most pressing at the time of federation. American states were vexed by many custom houses and were endangered by European civilization and the savagery of the American Indians. Canada was split by two languages and feared the waxing strength of America. The Australian and South African internal contentions arising over customs and railway rivalries were overshadowed by ominous additions to German holdings in the South Pacific and in East and West Africa respectively. Similar reasons are adduced to-day in favour of the federation of the six Britannic nations.
The union of the "United Collonyes of New England" in 1643 appears inadequate and impotent in the light of our subsequent "closer unions." But it was the first voluntary common government instituted by separate governments of English-speaking {204} people.[204-1] The reasons for this co-operation are stated in terms worthy the attention and study of present-day Pan-Angles: ". . . and whereas in our settling (by a wise providence of God) we are further dispersed upon the sea-coasts and rivers then was at first intended, so thatt wee cannott (according to our desire) with conveniencie communicate in one government and jurisdiction; and whereas we live in compassed with people of severall nations and strange languages which hereafter may prove injurious to us and our posterity: and forasmuch as the natives have formerly committed sundry insolencies and outrages upon severall plantations of the English and have of late combined against us and seeing, by reason of the sad distractions in England, which they have heard of, and by which they know we are hindered both from thatt humble way of seeking advice, and reaping those comfortable frutes of protection, {205} which att other times we might well expect, we therefore doe conceive itt our bounden dutye without delay to enter into a present consociation amongst ourselves for mutuall help and strength in all our future concernments, thatt . . . we bee and continue one, according to the tennure and true meaning of the ensueing articles."[205-1]
Federation was evolved by our race. Though its use was only dimly understood in the years that followed 1643, its powers are now known to us. It has proved the means of welding many of our once jealous and discordant units into concentrated and self-protective powers. Applied to all our nations, federation would produce that co-operation necessary for the survival of our civilization, yielding both the freedom we demand and the strength that is indispensable—that Pan-Angle paradox of flexity and firmness.
[184-1] A. L. Burt, Imperial Architects, Oxford, 1913, p. 14; cf. pp. 14-16: "In all likelihood it was but a chance suggestion without any serious purpose behind it, for, in his subsequent career as Governor, though he erected an assembly which was not ratified by the King, he did not, as far as can be ascertained, once recur to this idea.
"It is doubtful when, or by whom, in the eighteenth century, the first suggestion of American representatives in the British Parliament was made. Though Franklin was perhaps not the first, yet his proposal is the earliest extant."
[185-1] John Bigelow, The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin, New York, 1887, vol. ii. pp. 343-375, gives the plan in full.
[186-1] John Bigelow, The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin, New York, 1887; "Letter of Franklin to Shirley, December 22, 1754," vol. ii. p. 384.
[186-2] Ency. Brit., vol. i. p. 832; "In him [Franklin] was the focus of the federating impulses of the time. . . . He was, first of men, broadly interested in all the colonies, and in his mind the future began to be comprehended in its true perspective and scale; and for these reasons to him properly belongs the title of 'the first American.'"
[186-3] H.E. Egerton, Federations and Unions within the British Empire, Oxford, 1911, p. 16.
[187-1] C.A.W. Pownall, Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, pp. 50-51.
[187-2] Ibid., p. 204, and ante, p. 186, note 1. One of Franklin's cleverest hoaxes was, "An Edict of the King of Prussia," 1773, proclaiming that the island of Britain was a colony of Prussia, having been settled by Angles and Saxons, having been protected by Prussia, having been defended by Prussia against France in the war just passed, and never having been definitely freed from Prussia's rule; and that, therefore, Great Britain should now submit to certain taxes laid by Prussia—the taxes being identical with those laid upon American colonies by Great Britain. Cf. Ency. Brit., vol. xi. p. 26.
[188-1] Thomas Pownall, The Administration of the Colonies, 3rd ed. (1766), quoted by C.A.W. Pownall, Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, p. 187.
[188-2] C.A.W. Pownall, Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, p. 187.
[188-3] Lord Milner, May 28, 1904, at Navy League Meeting, Johannesburg, in Lord Milner, The Nation and the Empire, London, 1913, p. 67.
[189-1] C.A.W. Pownall, Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, pp. 199-200.
[190-1] W. T. Stead, The Last Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes, London, 1902, p. 78: "Letter of Cecil J. Rhodes dated August 19 and September 8, 1891, to William T, Stead."
[190-2] Ibid., p, 102.
[191-1] R. W. Emerson, English Traits, 1856, Boston reprint, 1894, p.261.
[192-1] G. R. Parkin, Imperial Federation, London, 1892, pp. 71-72.
[192-2] Woodrow Wilson, The State, 1898, Boston, rev. ed., 1911, p. 454.
[192-3] Ibid., p. 565.
[194-1] When a federation is built from component parts, certain powers are delegated by the parts to the central government. When a federation is made by dividing a unitary government, certain powers are devoluted by the existing government to the parts.
[194-2] P. A. Silburn, Governance of Empire, London, 1910, p. 210.
[195-1] Woodrow Wilson, The State, 1898, Boston, rev. ed., 1911, p. 473, points out that of the twelve greatest subjects of legislation occupying the attention of the British Parliament during the last century—Catholic emancipation, parliamentary reform, the abolition of slavery, the amendment of the poor laws, the reform of municipal corporations, the repeal of the corn laws, the admission of the Jews to Parliament, the disestablishment of the Irish Church, the alteration of the Irish land laws, the establishment of national education, the introduction of the ballot, and the reform of the criminal law—only two (corn laws and slavery) would in America have been subjects for central (federal) government regulation. Prior to the American Civil War only one of these two, the former, would have been a subject for central (federal) government regulation.
[196-1] For a detailed account of the difficulties of the British Isles Parliament in this connection, cf. An Analysis of the System of Government throughout the British Empire, London, 1912, Introduction, pp. xii-li.
[196-2] Cf. "Pacificus," Federalism and Home Rule, London, 1910; also Arthur Ponsonby, "The Future Government of the United Kingdom," in Contemporary Review, London, November 1913.
[197-1] "Pacificus," Federalism and Home Rule, London, 1910, pp. xlviii-xlix.
[197-2] The Times, London, October 10, 1913.
[198-1] The Times, London, March 3, 1913. Account of meeting of delegates of All for Ireland League, Cork, March 1, 1913.
[198-2] Ibid.
[199-1] John Bigelow, The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin, New York, 1887, vol. ii. pp. 376-387.
[200-1] As federation is used in these pages for combinations of self-governing groups, no allusion is here made to any plans for uniting dependencies for administrative purposes such as that contained in C. S. Salmon's The Caribbean Confederation, London, 1888, or in the established grouping of dependent areas now styled "Federated Malay States "—concerning which latter, see Frank Swettenham, British Malaya, London, 1907. Such bear no comparison with self-governing federations.
[200-2] W.H. Taft, Popular Government, New Haven, Connecticut, 1913, p. 145.
[201-1] G. R. Parkin, Imperial Federation, London, 1892, p. 33.
[201-2] As an example, cf. Alexander Hamilton: An Essay on American Union, by F. S. Oliver, London, 1906.
[201-3] Lord Milner, April 28, 1910, at Compatriots' Club, London, in Lord Milner, The Nation and the Empire, London, 1913, p.454.
[202-1] The Times, London, October 10, 1913. Cf. ante, p. 197.
[202-2] Letter of Rhodes to Parnell, June 19, 1888, quoted in W. T. Stead, The Last Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes, London, 1902, pp. 122-124. On p. 120, Stead states as to Rhodes' contribution to the Irish party: "The contract between the African and the Irishman was strictly limited to the conversion of Home Rule from a disruptive to a federative measure. It had no relation directly or indirectly to any of Mr Rhodes' Irish-African schemes. The whole story is told at length by 'Vindex' in an appendix to The Political Life and Speeches of Mr. Cecil Rhodes, from which I quote these letters."
[203-1] W. T. Stead, The Last Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes, London, 1902, p. 102, pp. 51-77 and other pages.
[204-1] P. A. Silburn, The Governance of Empire, London, 1910, p. 191: "Half a century before the union of England and Scotland was brought about, a union of British colonies had been successfully achieved. It was in May 1643 that a convention of colonial representatives confederated the British colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven as the 'United Colonies of New England.' The negotiations leading up to this confederation had taken six years, but when once the union was effected its advantages were felt immediately. At this time England, engaged elsewhere, had neither the time nor the inclination to interfere with her American colonies. The newly-formed confederation enjoyed almost complete liberty. A year after the union we find this confederation negotiating treaties with the French and projecting defences against the Dutch. But this, the first union of colonies in the Empire, was not a legislative one, it was simply an agreement of 'offence and defence, advice and assistance.'"
[205-1] H. E. Egerton, Federations and Unions within the British Empire, Oxford, 1911, p. 103, "Articles of Confoederation betwixt the Plantations under the Government of the Massacusetts, the Plantations under the Government of New Plymouth, the Plantations under the Government of Conecticutt, and the Government of Newhaven, with the Plantations in combination with Itt."
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IX
WORKING FOR FEDERATION
To maintain the individual liberty of its citizens from alien interference is the task before each of the seven Pan-Angle nations. Whether a closer union of the six units of the Britannic power is sufficient insurance of the safety of each, and whether the United States standing alone has sufficient margin of safety, are at least debatable questions. Some foreign power arguing in the negative might win. But that a closer union of the entire self-governing English-speaking race would be strong enough to protect each of its component nations is here assumed to be not a debatable question. It is here postulated that upwards of one hundred and forty-one million English-speaking whites are strong enough to hold their own against the forces of the world for considerable time to come. The problem resolves itself into a struggle for the supremacy, and finally for the survival, of the Pan-Angle civilization.
We can federate. All our past history teaches this.
The Britannic nations and America all contain an individualistic form of patriotism that lends itself to Pan-Angle federation. Just as {207} American Pan-Angle gives allegiance to the ideals behind the dull earth he calls his home, be it city, town, township or parish; so he gives a larger allegiance to his state; and a still more comprehensive loyalty to his nation of forty-eight states. Just as the Britannic Pan-Angle holds in affection his throbbing factory city, or sheep-trimmed shire, or township lush with ripening wheat; so he holds in greater affection "That blessed plot, that earth, that realm, that England," or "that" New South Wales, or "that" Saskatchewan; and in still greater affection the British Isles, or Australia, or Canada. Among the Britannic Pan-Angles is now growing a further patriotism for the ideal of a Britannic whole of which each of the six nations would be a part. Throughout the Pan-Angle world let us add to these patriotisms for our dreamed-of Britannic whole and for our United States a still larger patriotism for our English-speaking civilization, our Pan-Angle lands.
Patriotism cannot attach itself to treaties or alliances, "the very nature of an arbitration board is negative."[207-1] Nor can it profess "loyalty" to a nation not its own. A Massachusetts man cannot be loyal to New York State, nor a Victorian to New South Wales, nor an Englander to Scotland. Nor can an American be loyal to New Zealand, an Australian to South Africa, nor a Britisher to Canada. But a Massachusetts man can be loyal to America, a Victorian to Australia, and an Englander to the British Isles. And all three of these men, when their nations are part of the {208} federation of the English-speaking people, can be loyal Pan-Angles.
Expressive of multiple patriotisms fly a multiplicity of flags. Into battle alongside of the Stars and Stripes go the American state flags. They know no jealousy of the national banner. Its thirteen stripes stand for the thirteen independent nations that originally federated; its stars, now increased to forty-eight, stand each for a state now bound into the Union. It is not forgotten how the men of the flag of the Maple Leaf and those of the Four-starred and Five-starred Southern Crosses fought in South Africa alongside the men under the Union Jack. There is as yet no Britannic flag. The Union Jack is the British flag. It is not, as often called, "the English flag"; it never has been. It was formed of crosses, the emblems of three nations now united into one nation, the British Isles. As the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes were made, so we can make a Pan-Angle flag which every English-speaking man will instinctively salute. Such a flag will subtract no glory from the cherished symbols of our local prides. Loyalty to our common race in no way forbids loyalty to our present local groups. All these our flags, our loyalties, our groups, are to protect and to be protected by all Pan-Angles.
Federation can be accomplished by either of two procedures: the combination of the seven Pan-Angle nations directly, as seven independent units; or the combination of the United States and a Britannic Federation, after this latter has been formed. Arguments for Britannic federation are arguments for Pan-Angle federation. The man {209} who has persuaded himself of the soundness of the former will be in a position to appreciate the soundness of the latter. These pages are intended to set forth the necessity and inevitableness of Pan-Angle federation, by whichever method attained, and as such are in thorough accord with all efforts towards Britannic federation. Either course is possible, if delay does not furnish opportunities for our separate destruction in the meantime by some rival civilization.
All over the Britannic world are men working for "closer union." "The wisest and most farseeing Imperialists have steadily maintained that the ultimate end of the whole movement is Federation."[209-1] They are working now with only the six Britannic nations as their acknowledged field. Organized and unorganized, they are seeking patiently and intelligently for the safety of their respective nations, which they know is bound up in the safety of the whole people. They know the political ideals of their race. They know that though the unrepresented may be spasmodically willing to waive their rights in times of great common danger, they none the less believe that "taxation without representation is tyranny." These men know also that money gifts by any Pan-Angle nation to a navy controlled by another Pan-Angle nation is contrary to the political instincts of all involved. They know that "mutual funk," though it may hold their nations together for a time, is no safeguard against the future. They are working to create a political entity, able by the determination of its representatives to swing the whole of its strength {210} at once against any foe. These men have undertaken to persuade the Britannic Pan-Angle nations to put aside local prejudices and to support the whole of which each is a part.
Plans for Britannic "closer union" range from a scheme for Britannic representation in the British Parliament at London, such as Franklin advocated before the race had evolved federalism, through schemes for an alliance of the six nations with a capital outside the British Isles[210-1] to a plan for definite federation, including a new Britannic Parliament to be constituted of the representatives from each of the six nations.[210-2]
Being now in the stage of vague alliance, it may be that the Britannic Pan-Angles must accomplish definitely the alliance stage as a step on the road to federation. If so, those who favour a Britannic alliance[210-3] have the wisdom of the race on their side. But the same wisdom prophesies that the negative advantages of alliance will have to be changed later to the affirmative strength of a common government. Federation has been "the great ideal of the nineteenth century,"[210-4] and apparently continues to {211} gain advocates. Britannic "present 'imperial architects' are building more carefully and laboriously than did their predecessors."[211-1]
The greater part of the work for federation, either Britannic or Pan-Angle, has already been done for us. The explorer, the trader, the missionary, and the soldier have won for us the eminence from which we are now able to survey the world and form our plans. The statesmen who in our many legislative halls have laboured to fit forms of government to the needs of the governed have tested for us the material for our building and have discarded what was ill-suited to our purposes. The millions of individuals who have held true to their Pan-Angle ideals have bequeathed them to us for inspiration. It is for us to continue the work begun three centuries and more ago.
What remains to be done is to follow the path of our previous successes and avoid a repetition of our failures. These failures each nation can find often in the events of its own history without turning to the histories of other Pan-Angles; and these successes each nation can find in the histories of others, quite as well as in that of its own. Such seeking will make for a becoming modesty towards each other, and by it we shall lose nothing. We are not dealing in this matter with our inferiors or our betters. We are dealing with each other, to whom we cannot give, and with whom we cannot curry, favour. Conciliation among us is not less {212} necessary than compromise; without conciliation in the past we should not have framed successful constitutions. To-day, as in the folk-moots of our political ancestors,—" No man dictates to the assembly: he may persuade, but cannot command."[212-1] There is no room for hypocrisy among free whites who talk English. In our dealings with each other neither force nor intrigue should have place. Our history shows that if we adhere to these ideals we can succeed in co-operation.
We must avoid interfering with each other. Interference even when actuated by the best of motives leads, as Pan-Angles have repeatedly experienced, to disastrous frictions and ruptures. This knowledge we have repeatedly bought at great cost. So well has the lesson been learned, that even in cases where interference is constitutional and where circumstances seem to justify it, a Pan-Angle government first tries persuasion. The United States Federal Government may consider a Californian alien land act contrary to a United States treaty; the British Parliament may consider the Ulster agitation serious enough to justify coercion: both know that conciliation and persuasion are the safe and permanent means to employ to right whatever the wrong may be. Interference augments stubbornness; persuasion hastens co-operation.
More than this, interference leads to failure. In 1849, the British Privy Council drafted a bill for the federation of the Australian colonies. It was not made by those for whose use it was intended. {213} Its clauses did "not show any close grip of the subject, or sign that their authors realized how they could be worked in practice."[213-1] Nothing came of the plan. The only purpose it served was to illustrate the futility of one Pan-Angle nation acting for another. In 1819-1820 began the Britannic immigrant occupation of South Africa.[213-2] In 1875 the British Isles government suggested that the various colonies in South Africa should be combined.[213-3] Viewed in the knowledge of to-day it almost appears such a step would have been advisable. The best intentions must be imputed to the outside government. Had this action been advocated by the South Africans, some kind of joint government might have resulted. Since it was not, the plan was merely a source of increased hard feeling between colonists of Dutch and British descent, and is to be included with other instances of British interference which were the major causes of the long and bitter Great Boer War. Each of these nations, Australia and South Africa, when it was ready and in its own way, produced for itself a plan of common government. A Britisher in the highest administrative office in South Africa wrote in 1907: "It is a modern axiom of British policy that any attempt to manage the domestic affairs of a white population by a continuous exercise of the direct authority of the Imperial Parliament, in which the people concerned are not represented, is, save under very special circumstances, a certain {214} path to failure."[214-1] American experience goes still further. There, every community is represented in every government having legislative jurisdiction over it. Yet it has been proved advisable to leave certain spheres of legislation solely to the wishes of the community affected.
For many years the British Isles has been the Pan-Angle nation which, from its position, was most tempted to interfere with the affairs of the others. The lessons its failures set forth may be taken to heart by the younger nations as they grow in strength. Neither America, nor Canada, nor Australia, nor South Africa, nor New Zealand, nor Newfoundland can at any time in their future afford to make the mistake of trying to compel one of the six other nations. An advantage of numbers, or position, or wealth, may lie at some time with anyone of them. On that one, then, will rest the obligation of keeping its hands off the others. Particularly does this apply to that one of us whose very existence is due to its revolt against interference, but hardly less to those others of us whose more peaceful origins were made possible by an already won revolution.
Federation should be attained through familiar governmental forms, not through innovations. Burke knew his civilization's aversion to change which "alters the substance of the objects themselves, and gets rid of all their essential good as well as of all the accidental evil annexed to them," {215} whose results "cannot certainly be known beforehand." He knew his civilization's belief in reform—" a direct application of a remedy to the grievance complained of. So far as that is removed, all is sure. It stops there; and if it fails, the substance which underwent the operation, at the very worst, is but where it was."[215-1] In this re-form, the essence of our civilization—our language, our individualism, our standards of living based on land plenty—should be left unchanged. The new growth, federation, will "remedy the grievance complained of"—the danger of the extinction of our civilization.
Pending federation, the Pan-Angle nations must on no account weaken each other, and so the entire race, with war. Much faith is put, in these days, in arbitration, but on false presumptions. No so-called "international arbitration court" in existence has any authority whatsoever.[215-2] Such a body is of value only when it is giving advice to contestants who greatly desire to come to a friendly agreement, and who, for the sake of peace, are predisposed to take the "court's" advice. Even then its value is not great, for such contestants might very probably, without its aid, have come to a peaceable understanding. The Pan-Angle nations do most heartily desire peace among themselves. They are then the best calculated to find arbitration useful. The question thus arises whether some tribunal can be established on Pan-Angle soil, for the settlement of Pan-Angle inter-national {216} disputes. It would be a makeshift and powerless, until by the establishment of a common government it ceased to be inter-national, and became a potent source of justice under the Pan-Angle federation.[216-1] It is, however, a straw we well might grasp until we reach a firmer footing. The greatest advantage of an organized body for Pan-Angle arbitration is that from it might develop something more practicable, as from the Maryland-Virginia Conference at Alexandria in 1785[216-2] and as from the South African Railway Rates Conference in 1908[216-3] developed respectively the federations of the United States and South Africa.
Other stepping-stones ready for our use are to be found in Britannic-American conferences on matters of mutual interest. In February 1908 a conference on the conservation of the natural resources of North America was held at Washington, at which three Pan-Angle nations were represented by delegates.[216-4] Some of the subjects suitable for such discussion are forests, river flowage for power or irrigation purposes, and migrating birds. If a conference were held for mutual information on sea-fisheries, all our nations might well send delegates. A similar opportunity is afforded in the urgent need of making uniform and sensible the spelling of our language. At a meeting in connection with the Conference of Education {217} Associations in London, January 5, 1914, it was stated "that an international conference should be summoned at which all parts of the British Empire and the United States should be represented."[217-1]
However great the good resulting from such conferences in relation to their stated objects, it may some day appear insignificant compared to the assistance rendered towards producing federation.
Quicker and cheaper communication is working steadily towards better Pan-Angle understanding. International postal arrangements date only from 1874, but two-cent (penny in the British Isles, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa) postage is now so general from points within to other points within the Pan-Angle world, that by far the majority of inter-Pan-Angle letters have the advantage of that rate. Land and water telegraphs by wire and wireless are steadily linking up points further and further apart, and rates are becoming cheaper. The telephone is now a common household necessity over much of the Pan-Angle world, and bids fair in time to conquer distances as effectively as do telegraph lines. Every such agency, producing a very real "closer union," is a factor in promoting Pan-Angle federation.
The cheapness and speed of travel are increasing at rates to which no bounds can reasonably be set. Steamers, on which we so largely depend as inter-Pan-Angle carriers, yearly serve more routes, are more numerous and faster. We shift easily from one country to another as business or inclination takes us. Ambassador Page has proposed that newspaper men from the British Isles and America serve an {218} apprenticeship on journalistic staffs in each other's countries.[218-1] The imperial "grand tour" of the British Isles parliamentary party, recently completed,[218-2] gave British politicians, better than would any number of voluminous reports, an opportunity to appreciate the needs and aspirations of the five other Britannic nations. The celebration of the Centenary of Peace will this year furnish innumerable similar opportunities. Every personal acquaintance of one Pan-Angle with the country of other Pan-Angles makes for the understanding that must precede federation.
The formation of a Pan-Angle federation must depend in the end on our voters who are the source of first and final appeal in our political problems. It will be achieved when they are self-persuaded that it is desirable, that is, when they have been educated to see its necessity. Only such means of education may properly be used as will open the path to self-persuasion. Among these, two readily suggest themselves. The first is the educative work that can be done by associations of those aroused to interest in the matter. The second is the educative influence of travel and sojourn of Pan-Angles in each other's countries.
Voluntary associations established by private initiative are among us recognized means of furthering reform. Through public discussion, whether printed or spoken, they have fostered many of the great movements for which we all {219} are now grateful. "Discussion is the greatest of all reformers. It rationalizes everything it touches. It robs principles of all false sanctity and throws them back upon their reasonableness. If they have no reasonableness, it ruthlessly crushes them out of existence and sets up its own conclusions in their stead."[219-1] These associations and their beliefs, if not supplying a public need, wither and die. But if the times call for them, movements are started which pass through a regular growth from insignificance and obscurity to contempt and ridicule, followed by public opposition and finally by success. Such have been the histories of the freedom of conscience, the abolition of slavery, and a host of similar triumphs. Men of like ideals associate themselves together, take a name that proclaims their tenets, and spend their time and energy and money to set forth the truth as they see it. Everyone is given a chance to learn, but no one is compelled to believe. No purpose can be so lofty, no course of action so advantageous, that it does not need expounding. The countless peace societies and the millions spent in that cause bear witness. Meeting places must be hired, literature must be printed and posted, advertising in its many forms must not be neglected. All this means sacrifice of some sort from somebody—obviously from those who have the success of the work at heart. In every Pan-Angle nation can be found plenty of organizations which are doing on a small scale in reference to some local interest just what some non-local, inter-national organization could {220} well do on a large scale for such an ideal as Pan-Angle federation. The organization should be on an inter-Pan-Angle basis, if for no other reason than to make for uniformity in its efforts and to prevent it from slipping into local points of view. As the demand for Pan-Angle federation grows, practical politics will not remain insensible to it. Then will be the time to marshal to its aid forces such as have finally established by law the present nationhood of each of us.
In this labour of education we must work openly in the presence of each other and under the scrutiny of the nations of the world. If we were Germans or Japanese, an international coup might be accomplished by diplomatic work unknown to the voters, and the affair put through with secrecy and despatch. It is vain to wish for such a style of procedure, and we have no desire, in this case, to change from the more laborious and tedious method of popular education and individual action. So to change would demonstrate that we had lost the very essence of our civilization—the initial as well as the final control of our own destinies. We must work openly, because it is one of our inestimable privileges to make up our own minds.
Not only can individual initiative accomplish this work, it can do it better than can any other method. Ideas of state interference under the guise of public ownership are making headway all over the Pan-Angle world. One industry after another, for one reason or another, is removed from the field of private endeavour, and is run for good or ill by governments. It has never been thus with our political undertakings. The spectacle of {221} a Pan-Angle government calling on all good citizens to aid in celebrating a Twenty-first of November, or a Twenty-fourth of May, or a Fourth of July is so unheard of as to be laughable,[221-1] and it is to be hoped that in the matter of Pan-Angle federation the people will be the compelling power forcing their respective governments to action.
Of the promotion of travel and sojourn of Pan-Angles in each other's countries we have one notable example. Cecil John Rhodes, wishing to instil in the minds of Britannic Pan-Angles "the advantage to the Colonies as well as to the United Kingdom of the retention of the unity of the Empire,"[221-2] and desiring "to encourage and foster an appreciation of the advantages which I implicitly believe will result from the union of the English-speaking peoples throughout the world and to encourage in the students from the United States of North America . . . an attachment to the country from which they have sprung but without I hope withdrawing them or their sympathies from the land of their adoption or birth,"[221-3] directed the trustees of his estate to establish scholarships at the University of Oxford. Each year picked men from English-speaking lands travel to England, enrol themselves in this Pan-Angle university, and there measure themselves against representatives of all their race. At the end of three years they return to their respective countries. The book {222} knowledge they have acquired could have been furnished by any one of many universities. But Rhodes' sagacity has given them infinitely more. They have lived and studied and travelled in what is truly the Mother Country of us all. They have become conscious of their fellow Pan-Angles and have made their fellow Pan-Angles conscious of them. Their understanding and sympathy is freed for all time from narrow prejudices.
The work so generously begun should be extended. Not only in the British Isles but in North America, in South Africa, and in Australasia young Pan-Angles should be brought in touch with the other portions of our race, and should see at first hand what problems require solving by us throughout the world. Not a Pan-Angle university from McGill to Dunedin, from Ann Arbor to Stellenbosch, but would welcome some exchange of students similar to the growing system of exchange professors. Not one, if it could offer scholarships to the youth of the other nations, but would have enlarged the scope of its usefulness and have grown from local to inter-national importance. Patriotic Pan-Angles by endowing such scholarships could hasten the accomplishment of the Pan-Angle federation, and thus share in ensuring the safety of every Pan-Angle nation, and in securing our civilization for the benefit of ourselves and for the peace of the world.
Meanwhile no vision of future Pan-Angle safety should blind anyone of us to his country's present needs. In the interim before federation, we must so strengthen each of our respective nations as best to weather the storm of adversity should it {223} burst upon us before co-operation is secured. Simultaneously with the recession to home waters of the British Isles fleet, the younger Britannic nations are taking appropriate steps to ensure their separate interests. This is an evidence that each recognizes danger. Each assumes that these defensive efforts are not induced by the fear of other Pan-Angles. This is no place to discuss the compulsory military service already established in New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa, nor to suggest that it would not be needed were Pan-Angle federation already an accomplished fact. Nor is this a suitable occasion to discuss the policies, strengths, or weaknesses of separate Britannic or Pan-Angle navies. America must be equal to the emergency of defending all Pan-Angles who would seek its protection if the British Isles fleet were to suffer a serious setback. Wisely, America and Canada waste no Pan-Angle funds in fortifications on their long boundary or in war vessels on the Great Lakes. But they should both maintain on salt water navies, which they can use for the joint interests of Pan-Angles. Canada and America may soon need to co-operate with Australasia in solving the problems of the Pacific.[223-1] Pan-Angle nations may severally make alliances with foreign powers for the purpose of protecting us all. One of them has already done so.[223-2] But peoples who are strong enough make no foreign alliances.
As we work towards federation we must not be {224} discouraged at our slow rate of visible progress. For "slow thought is the ballast of a self-governing state."[224-1] The growth of the federal idea may be none the less vigorous because its fruitage appears long delayed. These pages abound with examples of the fact that we are slow to move politically. Were it otherwise, the autonomous nations of the Britannic world would long since have had representation in some common parliament, would have established a single final court of appeal, and a common citizenship; an overburdened British Parliament would no longer legislate on English municipal drainage, affairs of the dependencies, and questions of inter-Pan-Angle concern. As it is, the five younger Britannic nations, realizing tardily that the British navy no longer adequately protects them, have not as yet bestirred themselves to effect more cohesive and coherent political relations with each other, and between themselves and the British Isles. America, astride the Western Hemisphere, in her own estimation secure against invasion, is taken up with internal development, and but seldom, even since the last Pan-Angle war with Spain, looks out at the increasing pressure beyond her borders.
We move slowly. Pan-Angle federation is still a dream. But no one can foresee how rapidly external pressure may turn dreams into practical politics. The federation of the Pan-Angles may be forced upon us—ready or not. Or we may find some day that it is too late to federate.
Our method of combining, the distribution of powers between the existing governments and the {225} new government, it is not here necessary or appropriate to discuss, other than to acknowledge that our history confesses that federation is the present ideal of government of this civilization. In other instances of suggested closer union, "The advocates of national consolidation have been constantly subjected, as everyone familiar with current discussion knows, to two diametrically opposite forms of criticism. They are vigorously reproached . . . for not stating in detail the method by which their purposes are to be accomplished; they are ridiculed . . . as people who aim at binding together by means of a 'cut and dried plan' an Empire which has hitherto depended upon slow processes of growth for its constitutional development."[225-1] Enough that in our previous separate histories we have had constitutional conventions to draw up both national and state constitutions. Many men who have taken part in such conventions are now living. What we have acquired a habit of doing on a large scale, we can do again on a larger scale. Such representatives can construct, for submission to our voters, a framework of federal Pan-Angle government.
With the voters of the seven Pan-Angle nations rest the decisions of when and how our co-operation is to be accomplished. That it is to be accomplished many now earnestly believe. And of it many can now say, as did Washington in the American Constitutional Convention: "Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair." Before that future constitutional convention can have been accomplished, men will have {226} gathered together the wisdom of the race, and will have drawn up a constitution better than any now in use. Voters from the ends of the earth will discuss what our governmental framework should be, and, although our statesmen will act the major parts, we may agree with Burke: "I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business."[226-1]
What is desirable in this federation to preserve ourselves from the menace of other civilizations? How shall we balance our powers to ensure freedom to the individual and freedom to local groups to follow their individual yearnings with safety to them and to us all? How shall we bind ourselves for that all-time, the indefinite future, so that we shall be gladly bound, and yet be freemen still? "If, . . . in the famous words of Lincoln, we as a body in our minds and hearts 'highly resolve' to work for the general recognition: by society of the binding character of international duties and rights as they arise within the Anglo-Saxon group, we shall not resolve in vain. A mere common desire may seem an intangible instrument, and yet, intangible as it is, it may be enough to form the beginning of what in the end can make the whole difference."[226-2]
[207-1] A. L. Burt, Imperial Architects, Oxford, 1913, p. 86.
[209-1] A. L. Burt, Imperial Architects, Oxford, 1913, p. 125.
[210-1] Richard Jebb, Colonial Nationalism, London, 1905, p. 336: "The imperial city shall lose her pride of place. In another seagirt isle, by the margin of the Pacific. . . . sleeps a fair city." According to Mrs. Henshaw, F.R.G.S., in United Empire, London, January 1914, p. 80, Vancouver Island was named by Sir Francis Drake, 1579, New Albion.
[210-2] A rÉsumÉ of projects for Britannic federation is given in A. L. Burt, Imperial Architects, Oxford, 1913, pp. 152-195; the necessity of, and possible transitional stages on the way towards, federation are discussed, ibid., pp. 196-225.
[210-3] Richard Jebb, Studies in Colonial Nationalism, London, 1905; and The Britannic Question, London, 1913.
[210-4] A.L. Burt, Imperial Architects, Oxford, 1913, p. 147.
[211-1] Ibid., Introduction by H. E. Egerton, p. vi.
[212-1] Arthur Murphy, The Works of Cornelius Tacitus, London, 1793, vol. iv. p. 17.
[213-1] H. E. Egerton, Federations and Union within the British Empire, Oxford, 1911, p. 183.
[213-2] W. B. Worsfold, The Union of South Africa, London, 1912, p. 104.
[213-3] Ency. Brit., vol. xxv. p. 475.
[214-1] A Review of the Present Mutual Relations of the British South African Colonies, to which is appended a Memorandum on South African Railway Unification, "Printed by Authority" [Johannesburg, 1907], p. 5.
[215-1] Quoted in Woodrow Wilson, Mere Literature, Boston, 1900, p. 149.
[215-2] Cf. ante, p. 121.
[216-1] The growth of inter-cantonal arbitration in Switzerland, leading to present federal court, is alluded to in Woodrow Wilson, The State, 1898, rev. ed., Boston, 1911, p. 328.
[216-2] Ency. Brit., vol. xxvii. p. 685.
[216-3] Ibid., vol. xxv. p. 482.
[216-4] Britannica Year Book, London, 1913, p. 664.
[217-1] The Times Weekly Edition, London, January 9, 1914.
[218-1] The Times Weekly Edition, London, December 19, 1913. Account of Speech of American Ambassador at dinner of the Institute of Journalists, London, December 13, 1913.
[218-2] United Empire, London, January 1914, p. 13.
[219-1] Woodrow Wilson, The State, 1898, Boston, rev. ed., 191, p. 139.
[221-1] The French Government Proclamations posted in Paris (in 1909) concerning the 14th of July called on all good citizens to help the government celebrate the day.
[221-2] W.T. Stead, The Last Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes, London, 1902, p. 28.
[221-3] Ibid., pp. 24-29.
[223-1] Cf. R.M. Johnston in the New York Times, November 16, 1913, p. 5; and Round Table, London, June 1913, pp. 572-583.
[223-2] British-Japanese treaty and French understanding.
[224-1] Woodrow Wilson, Mere Literature, Boston, 1900, p. 98.
[225-1] G.R. Parkin, Imperial Federation, London, 1892, p. 296.
[226-1] Quoted in Woodrow Wilson, Mere Literature, Boston, 1900, p. 152.
[226-2] Rt. Hon. Richard Burdon Haldane, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, before the American Bar Association, Montreal, September 1, 1913, Report of Thirty-Sixth Meeting of the Association, Baltimore, 1913, p. 416.
{227}
X
CONCLUSION
THE English-speaking peoples who govern themselves are faced by the not remote possibility of the destruction of one or more of their seven nations, should these nations be unable to co-operate. The destruction of anyone would be a loss to all the others. The destruction of one or more of these nations might carry in its turn the destruction of others—or all. If one of the densely populated and wealthy nations were overpowered, the others would be exposed to the greater risk of attack. If one of the less densely populated and less wealthy nations were destroyed, the race would be deprived of homes for its growing numbers. The Britannic nations and America have identical interests in the safety of each and everyone of these seven nations. The belief is here expressed that no co-operation short of unity of government will form an effective means of safeguarding the Pan-Angle civilization.
The danger to the Britannic nations was expressed in May 1911: "The truth is that the safety of the Imperial system cannot be maintained much longer by the arrangements which exist at present. No one, in the face of the facts brought {228} forward in this article, can believe that the need for national strength is disappearing. The British naval budget and the creation of the Dominion navies alone disprove it. Yet it is quite clear that Great Britain alone cannot indefinitely guarantee the Empire from disruption by external attack. The further one looks ahead the more obvious does this become. A nation of 45,000,000 souls, occupying a small territory and losing much of the natural increase in its population by emigration, cannot hope to compete in the long run even against single powers of the first magnitude—with Russia, for instance, with its 150,000,000 inhabitants, with America with its 90,000,000, with Germany with its 65,000,000, increasing by nearly a million a year, to say nothing of China with its 430,000,000 souls. Far less can if hope to maintain the dominant position it has hitherto occupied in the world, with a dozen new powers entering upon the scene. Each of these powers, of small account by itself, is already an important factor in the scale which measures the balance of power. And as they are steadily increasing in wealth and population, it is only a question of time before some of them will become first-class powers in their turn. What will be the position of the Empire then, if it has to depend upon the navy of England alone? Obviously the day must come when, if the Empire is to continue, it must be defended by the joint efforts of all its self-governing peoples."[228-1]
In March 1913 another Britannic writer states: "The urgency of the situation does not diminish. {229} Already, without striking a blow, Germany has practically detached the British navy from every sea except the North Sea—a result which no Englishman a few years ago would have believed to be possible in any circumstances whatever."[229-1]
The Britannic nations are not united in any single foreign policy. Hence they offer many opportunities for fatal discord. "It is simply impossible for the Dominions to set up independent foreign policies and independent defensive systems of their own without destroying the Empire, even if foreign powers refrain from attack. Suppose the present tendency carried to its logical conclusion. Instead of there being one government responsible for the safety of the Empire, there will be five. Each of these governments will be free to pursue any policy it likes, and each will have military or naval strength with which to back its policy. Each of them, therefore, may involve itself in war. And if the policy of one government, or the use it makes of its navy, does lead to war, what is to be the position? Are the other governments to be involved? The Dominions, not unreasonably, do not admit their responsibility for the policy of Great Britain, because they have no share in framing it. Is Great Britain to be responsible for the policy of the Dominions? Australia, for instance, is committed to the policy of Asiatic exclusion—a policy which may lead to international complications of the gravest kind."[229-2] Again, "Obviously, the principle of complete local autonomy, admirably as it works for the {230} internal politics of the Empire, cannot be applied to foreign affairs. The Empire will infallibly disappear if anyone of five governments can involve it in war."[230-1]
The Round Table article does not even consider the chance of war between Britannic nations. Doubtless the thought is so abhorrent that the possibilities which the facts present are often overlooked. Yet such possibilities do exist, and are added reasons for Britannic unity of government.
Whatever dangers threaten the Britannic nations, threaten also America. In some cases these dangers are indirect or seemingly remote, in others, more immediately pressing. Injury to any part of the race would be an injury to America. If the Britannic nations receive any substantial damage, America must face the world as the head naval power of the English-speaking civilization. It would succeed to all the responsibilities and difficulties of that position, and its ability to discharge that duty would have been diminished by whatever damage the Britannic nations had sustained.
War between any of the Britannic nations and America would be as fratricidal as that between any of the six Britannic nations. But the possibility of such a war, however abhorrent, is not to be ignored. America's population among the Pan-Angle nations soon will be approximated only by that of Canada. Rivalry between America and Canada would weaken the civilization in its population and wealth centre—its heart. If such rivalry should involve the clash of the six Britannic nations against America, the struggle {231} would be more stupendous than any the race has yet experienced.
All that is written as argument for closer union among the Britannic nations applies with equal force to a project intended to check the intra-racial struggles and safeguard the inter-racial security of our whole Pan-Angle civilization. The Pan-Angles have had their civil wars, both in and out of England: the English Civil War, the American Revolution, and the American Civil War. The Pan-Angles have had their foreign wars. They have outrun the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and French. These struggles warn us to co-operate to avoid further civil wars and to meet the foreign wars to come.
The race centre has moved, as Franklin foresaw, across the Atlantic. Canada, reaching to the two oceans, is the keystone of the Britannic arch. Its population will soon exceed that of the British Isles, whether compared with the present or any future British Isles population now imaginable. A proposal to establish the Britannic capital in Canada commends itself to some who are anxious for Britannic closer union. This, however, concerns the political unity of only the smaller portion of the race. The Pan-Angle house would still be divided. The future will be better secured to the race if the seven nations, taking counsel together, build a common capital on that unfortified boundary between the two Atlantic-Pacific nations.
Bound into one federal body politic, the seven Pan-Angle nations would ensure to each of their component groups as final a sense of political security as any people have ever experienced {232} within the knowledge of history. We should doubtless prefer to enjoy such a security without entering into any political combination. Each nation desires to go its own gait, yielding no iota of its independence. Since we cannot do that in safety, it is better to be bound into a co-operative unity with our fellow Pan-Angles, than to run any risk of suffering the bondage of an alien government. Most of us have already tried federation and found it effective. The British Isles appears about to adopt it. While it makes for strength, it permits and encourages individual freedom and local self-government, essentials to Pan-Angle existence.
The reasons for federation are many, and the obstacles are not as great as those we have met and overcome in previous instances of like nature in our local histories.
Only a few reasons for federation have been here given. They are based on some of the reiterative similar facts which in our various local histories emphasize the same Pan-Angle principles. Many other reasons drawn from Pan-Angle experience will occur to the reader. He who wishes to see these arguments supplemented in the stories of the downfall of other civilizations can find much in non-Pan-Angle history to verify the theme of this book. But he will fail to find any case of the rule of one people over areas so extensive and so populous; he will fail to find free men so equal in freedom—religious, political, and personal. There are to-day over one hundred and forty-one millions of white, English-speaking, self-governing people, who are living witnesses that government of the {233} people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
For the citizens, and subject to their presentative sanction, the practice of representative government exists. The citizens do not exist for the sake of the government. To enlarge the sphere of the individual with due regard to the preservation of the group, Pan-Angles have used and proved the federal idea of government.
England gave us the tenets of presentative and representative control manifested in unitary governments. New England, beginning in the days of "The United Collonyes" of 1643, added to our English heritage the tenet of the co-existence of a federal common government and partner unitary governments. England is now merged into the nationality of the British Isles, and New England is merely a small corner of America. But the ideas they gave to us live wherever Pan-Angles talk of the safety of our civilization.
The success of our former attempts at lesser "closer unions," is the best evidence of our co-operative ability in the face of obstacles. American, Canadian, Australian, and South African experiences show how difficulties are overcome when the need is understood. Rhode Island held back—the last to enter the new America; Nova Scotia held back—the last willingly to enter the new Canada; Queensland held back—the last to enter the constitutional convention for the new Australia; and Natal held back—the last to support the new South Africa. Obstacles have always been present. They will arise in any effort for similar co-operations. But the common danger and common need is {234} enough to dispel the obstacles in the path of Pan-Angle federation.
Only by the force of public opinion do we accomplish our common intentions. We are slow to act politically. The refusal seven times repeated of the British Government to acknowledge New Zealand as within the Britannic world, and the long delayed start by America to build an Atlantic-Pacific canal are typical of all of us. But when our public desires are once formed they find a way to realization.
While we Pan-Angles wait, our rivals are growing stronger.
If anyone searches here for unfriendly criticism or disparagement, or for an ulterior motive in advocating such a federation, he will be disappointed or self-deceived. If he be an American who thinks he sees here a suggestion that the United States should assert the hidden might of her eighty odd millions of resourceful people to compel by diplomacy or tariffs such joint action; if he be a Britisher who thinks he sees here another pushing American plan of wider world control; if he be from one of the five new Britannic nations and guards jealously his own worthy pride of nationhood from the numerical domination of both the British Isles and America, and fears that his own nation's autonomy is covertly attacked—in any such case the reader, whoever he be, is wrong.
These pages are to tell Pan-Angles that their efforts will be wasted in any work not based on mutual respect and—may the word be used between men of a race who hesitate to show it—affection; to tell the Pan-Angle who has not {235} before realized it that we are all of the same race, hard fighters and firm friends; and to tell the men of each Pan-Angle nation that their system of individual representation, with primary and final control in the voters of the nation, is the race system. To the Pan-Angle reader, wherever he be, just around the corner or at the other side of the globe (which ought to be the same in this, our world), these pages are addressed in hopes of helping each of us better to understand each other, and to remind us how much we need each other's help.
This attempt to express ourselves in terms of ourselves may seem a trite treatise to those familiar with our history. The reason for saying trite things is lest we forget.
The federation of the Pan-Angles is, perhaps to many of us, the vision that is to become a reality as a result of this "Era of English-speaking Good Feeling." We have inherited not only lands but ideals from the men who fought for them, regardless of whether it was they or we, their children, who should inherit and enjoy them. To defend these lands, these ideals of personal freedom, and this language we speak, we once had unquestioned supremacy over the seas of the world. By a federation of the English-speaking white people of these seven nations, the control of the world and the self-control of our own citizens will again be in the certain care of the Pan-Angles.
"We sailed wherever ship can sail, We founded many a noble state; Pray God our greatness may not fail Through craven fear of being great."
[228-1] Round Table, London, May 1911, pp. 251-252.
[229-1] Richard Jebb, The Britannic Question, London, 1913, p. 258.
[229-2] Round Table, London, May 1911, pp. 252-253.
[230-1] Round Table, London, May 1911, pp. 253-254.
{236}
{237}
INDEX
Aborigines, the, of Pan-Angle lands, 27, 135.
Adams, John, cited, 107.
Administration, the, 118.
Administrative control, 94, 111.
Africa. See South Africa.
Albany Conference, 184, 186, 187, 191.
Aliens, assimilation of, 25, 26.
Alliance stage in Pan-Angle relations, 181.
America. See United States.
American:
Characteristics, 51.
National language, 39, 40.
Nationhood demonstrated in the issue of the Civil War, 168.
People, the, 23.
States, combination between, 53, 179, 180. See also under United States.
American Ambassador, the, quoted, 36-37.
American Bar Association, 172, 226 n. 2.
American Civil War, 150, 166-168, 173; effect of, on the attitudes of the British Isles and the United States, 169-170.
American colonies, the, 8, 10, 11; commercial friction in, in the eighteenth century, 121.
American colonization, 51 n. 1; women's share in, 51 and n. 2.
American Revolution, the, 15, 114 and n., 122, 161, 164, 174, 180; migrations incident to, 161-162.
Americanisms, 29.
Americans, defined, 84 n.
Angles, the, 4, 5, 6.
Anglican, the term, 18.
Anglo-Japanese treaty, 145, 223.
Anglo-Saxon: the term considered, 18; element in United States government, the, 37.
Appeal Court, 90.
Arbitration courts, 121, 122, 175 n. 2, 215.
Arbitration treaty between America and the British Isles, 182 n. 2.
Burke, E., cited, 11, 61; quoted, 94, 214-216, 226.
Cabot, John and Sebastian, 7 n. 1.
Caldecott, H., English Colonization and Empire, quoted, 59, 87, 91, 172 n. 2.
Canada, 13, 16, 23, 79, 110, 133, 158, 169, 172 and n. 2, 180, 191, 230, 231.
Government, 193, 194.
Immigration, 24-25 n.
Loyalist migrations into, during the American Revolution, 161-162.
Separation, the question of, 162, 163-164.
Upper House, election to, 109, 110.
Canadian Constitution, the, 98, 168.
Canadian Rebellion (1837), 15.
Cape Colony, native franchise in, 67.
Cape Times, quoted; 120 n. 1.
Carnarvon, Lord, cited, 123.
Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. Joseph, quoted, 87, 175; reply to Sir Wilfrid Laurier at Colonial Conference (1902), 181.
Chatham, Lord, 134, 174 and n.
China, 140-142, 143, 228; civilization of, as a danger for Pan-Angles, 141.
Choate, Joseph H., quoted, 176, n.
Churchill, Mr Winston, quoted, 197, 201-202.
Civil discord as a danger for Pan-Angles, 120.
Cobden, cited, 163.
Colonial Conference (1902), the, 79, 85, 181-182.
Colonial government, inauguration of modern, 162.
Colonial independence, 170.
Colonial Office, the, 89.
Colonial representation favoured by Pownall and Franklin, 184 n., 185, 187-189, 192, 199.
Colonies and possessions, distinction between, not appreciated by the rulers of England, 9-10, 13.
Colonization, by the Pan-Angles, 8, 51.
Commerce, competitions of, between nations, 121.
Common law of England and of Scotland, 67-68, 96, 97.
Conference of Education Associations, 216-217.
{239}
Congress and the American Constitution, 102-103.
Constitutional:
Government, 95.
Law, 97-98.
Constitutions, 60; as restrictions on the power of the people's representatives, 60.
American, 99 et seq.
Ancient and modern compared, 95 n. 2.
British, 96 et seq.
Written, 100, 105.
Converging tendency, 170, 173, 174.
Co-operation for protection of lands and trade, 46.
Corfield, Richard C., 49.
Court of Arbitration, 121, 122, 215.
Court of Appeal, 90.
Crown colonies, the, 16 n.
Danes, the, 4, 5, 6.
Dangers to the Pan-Angle civilization, 120 et seq., 227.
Civil discord, 120, 231.
Frictions, 121 et seq.
Sense of security as a danger, 135-137.
Subject populations as a source of, 156.
Defoe, Daniel, quoted, 6.
Delegation, 194 n. 1.
Democracy, 63.
Dependencies, distinguished from colonies, 9, 91-93.
Devolution, 194 and n. 1.
Dewey, Admiral, 54.
Dilke's Greater Britain, cited, 168.
Downing Street, 88, 89, 90, 125.
Dunraven, Lord, on the principles of Home Rule, 198.
Durham, Lord, Governor of Canada, 162.
East India Company, 162.
Education, 76-78.
Egerton, H. E., Federation and Unions, quoted, 205 n.
Election of representatives, the right of, 59.
Emerson, English Traits, quoted, 35, 191.
Emigration from Great Britain and Ireland, 22 and n.
Empire, the term, considered, 15-16 and nn., 88, 93.
England, the term, considered, 19.
England, 5; the Norman invasion, 5-6; in the Age of Discovery, 7; the union with Scotland, 10.
England and the American Colonies, 8, 10, 11, 177-179; Franklin's plans for closer union between, 184 et seq.
England, modern area of, 48 and n. 1
English Civil War and law reform, 68.
English common law, 67 et seq., 96, 97.
English, the term, considered, 18-19.
English language: the tie between Pan-Angles, 31-32, 39, 40; characteristics of, 33; development of, 28, 30, 33; standards in, 29; differences of dialect and colonization, 29; local variations of speech, 29, 30, 31; the written language, 31; place of, as a world language, 35; Americanisms, 29.
English-speaking peoples: the seven nations, 16 et seq., 79 et seq., 189; number of, 33 and n. 1 232; the assumption of superiority in, 35 et seq.
European migrations into Britain, 2.
Executive control, 94, 111.
Federal courts, 102-103.
Federalism, 200, 224.
Federated Malay States, the, 13, 14, 200 n. 1.
Federation, 200 n. 1, 232; evolution of, 205.
Federation of Pan-Angles, considered,93, 129-130, 203, 206 et seq., 227 et seq.; methods of, 208-209; plans for, 210 et seq.; arbitration as leading to, 216; conferences as stepping-stones to, 216-217; educative influences as factors in, 218-220, 221-222; facilities for communication as a factor in promoting, 217; voluntary {240} associations for promotion of, 218-220; defensive efforts previous to, 222-223.
Forbes, W. C., quoted, 92.
Foreign alliances, 223.
Foreign immigration and the Pan-Angle lands, 24, 25.
France, 131, effect of the Seven Years War on, 178; oversea possessions of, 132-133; regarded by British Isles as an effective ally, 133; holds no true colonies, 133.
Franklin, Benjamin, on colonial representation in the British Parliament, 184, n., 185, 192, 199; scheme of, for Pan-Angle union, 184-191 passim; a hoax by, 187 n. 2; quoted, 34, 53; cited, 12, 61, 173, 210, 231.
French and British in North America, characteristics of, 51.
Germanic tribes, early system of government in, 54-55.
Germany, 131, 138, 142, 143, 229; as a rival of the Pan-Angles, 152-156, 158, 228; rise of, 154; bureaucracy in, 155.
Gladstone, Rt. Hon. W. E., cited, 163.
Government, different significations of the word in England and United States, 118.
Government, ultimate control of, with the voters, 94, 95.
Non-unitary, 6, 193.
Unitary, 194. inadequacy of, 195.
Governmental practices, 94 et seq.
Governments: complementary functions in, 170; presentative and representative, 61, 62, 63.
Governors, the British, 86, 87, 108-109 n.; the power of veto of, 86, 87, 89.
Grant, President, 167, 169,
Grey, Sir Edward, 152.
Hague Tribunal, the, 121-122.
Haldane, Lord, quoted, 226 and n. 2.
Hamilton, Alexander, 117.
Hardinge, Lord, cited, 120 n. 1.
Hawaiian Islands, the, 143, 144.
Hay-Pauncefoote treaty, 128.
Hindus, 125 n. 1.
Holland, 131; oversea possessions of, 132 and n. 2.
Home Rule, 165 and n. 1, 198.
House of Commons, 57, 58, 95, 97, 104, 108.
House of Lords, 57 and n. 6, 58, 59, 90, 104, 108.
Howe, Joseph, 191.
Howe, Lord, 178 and n.
Howe, Sir William, 178 n.
Hudson's Bay Company, 49.
Hutchinson, quoted, 9.
Imperial Civil War, the. See American Revolution.
Imperial Defence Committee, 90, 91.
Imperial Federation, 15-16.
Joseph Howe's statement, 191.
Imperial Parliament, 88. India, 8, 9, 13, 16 n., 178.
Individualism of the Pan-Angles, 40, 47 et seq., 154; and the gift for combining, 52; and territorial acquisition, 48; and personal liberty, 50; in religion, 73-75.
Initiative, 60.
International arbitration, 121, 122, 175 n. 2, 215.
International postal arrangements, 217.
Ireland and the Irish question, 13, 164 and n. 4, 165, 197, 198; union with Great Britain, 192.
Japan, 139, 142-143; rise of, as a world power, 142, 147, 149, 152; the increasing population and the search for land, 143-144.
Japanese migration and Pan-Angle lands, 144-146, 151; Admiral Mahan on, 147 et seq.; the question of assimilation, 149-151.
Japanese treaty with Great Britain, 145, 223.
Jefferson, Thomas, 107, 126.
{241}
Jenks, E., The Future Of British Law, quoted, 68, 70,
Johnson, Dr., quoted, 38.
Johnston, Sir H, H., cited, 132 n. 1, 153.
Jutes, the, 4.
Land and the standard of living, 42 et seq.; co-operation for protection of, 46.
Language of the Pan-Angles, growth of, 28.
Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, quoted, 80, 86, 181.
Law in the Pan-Angle nations, 67 et seq.
Lee, Robert E., 167.
Legislative control, 94, 108.
Le Rossignol and Stewart, State Socialism In New Zealand, quoted, 53 n.
Leroy-Beaulieu, P., Les Etats-Unis au VingtiÈme SiÈcle, cited, 51 n.
Lincoln, President, 27 n. 1, 150, 166-167, 168, 226.
Local autonomy, 161, 172, 200, 229.
Lodge, H. C., One Hundred Years of Peace, cited, 123.
Louisiana, 133.
LourenÇo Marques, 132 n. 1.
Magna Carta, 53, 63.
Mahan, Admiral, 32; quoted on Japan among the Nations, 146 et seq.
Malay Peninsula, Federated States, the, 13, 14, 200 n. 1.
Marriage and divorce laws, 71-73; local laws, 72.
Maryland-Virginia, Conference (1785), 26.
Massachusetts: settlement of, 8; the Taunton liberty pole, 10, 11; during the Seven Years War, 134, 178, 179.
Mayflower, the, 29, 100.
Mill, J.S., The Subjection of Women, quoted, 73.
Milner, Lord, quoted, 86; on the federation of the Empire, quoted, 188, 201.
Modyford, Colonel Thomas, 184.
Monroe doctrine, the, 125-128, 154.
Monroe, President, 126, 127.
Moore, W. H., The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, cited, 83 n. 1.
Natal, 233
Asiatic Indians in, 123-124.
Zulu rebellion in, 123.
National Church, 74.
Native franchise question in South Africa, 66.
Naval co-operation between the Pan-Angle countries, 158-159, 223.
Naval expansion, effect on Great Britain, 157-158.
Naval strength, importance of, to the Pan-Angles, 157, 158; Colonial efforts for, 158, 182.
Negro problem, 27.
Slavery and the War of Secession, 150, 166.
Suffrage, 66-67.
Nelson, 54.
New England, the town meeting in, 59-61; union of the Colonies in, 203-205, 233.
Presentative element in British government, the, 58.
Presentative government in the Pan-Angle nations, 55, 56, 61; tendency towards an increase in, 62,
Privy Council, Judicial Committee of, 90-91, 124.
Queensland, 233.
Quoted passages, meaning of terms in, 19 n. 1
Recall, 60, 62.
Referendum, 60, 61.
Reform Bill (1832), 50, 112.
Religion and individualism, 73-75.
Representation: difficulties attendant upon, 60; not in itself enough for Pan-Angles, 200.
Representative government, development of, 54, 56-58; transplantation of, to the colonies, 58, 59.
Representative, a, not necessarily chosen by the people he represents, 59; chosen by elections and referenda, 95.
Rhode Island, 233.
{243}
Rhodes, Cecil J., 149,172; interest in the Irish question, 202 and n. 2; views of, as to federation, 202, 203; quoted, on English-speaking reunion, 190; the Rhodes' Scholarships, 221, 222.
Roman administration of Britain, 2-3.
Roman Empire population, 17 and n.
Roosevelt, President, 171 and n. 2.
Royal Colonial Institute, 168 and n.
Rushworth, quoted, 40.
Russia, 138-139, 142; growth of, significance for Pan-Angle civilization, 139, 142, 228; checked by Japan, 139.
Saxons, the, 4, 5, 6.
Scotland, union with England, 10.
Scots, the, Goldwin Smith quoted on, 36.
Sea power, importance of, to the Pan-Angles, 157, 158.
Seeley, J. R., Expansion of England, cited and quoted, 88, 92, 134, 160, 168.
Self-government, 8, 9, 120, 172, 201; effect of failure to distinguish between self-governing and non-self-governing areas, 13-16; and the right of the British Government, 85 and n., 89 et seq.; effect of improper check to, 161; principles of, violated in the British system, 196.
Sentiment and government, 183.
Separation, the tendency to, 160 et seq., 173.
Seven English-speaking nations, the, 16 et seq., 79 et seq., 189.
Seven Years War, 134, 178.
Shakespeare, cited, 28, 29.
Shelburne, Lord, 174.
Shirley, Governor, 185, 199.
Silburn, P. A., The Governance of Empire, quoted, 204, n.
Slavery, the abolition of, 50, 84, 150, 166.
Smith, Goldwin, quoted, 36, 150; cited, 164.
South Africa, 13, 16, 23, 80, 121, 172, 180.
South Africa:
Asiatic Indians in, 120 and n., 123-124, 158.
British Government and the internal affairs of, 123, 213.
Chinese indentured labour in, 123.
Constitution of, 99, 110.
Emancipation of slaves in, 84.
Government, 193.
Law in, 69.
Natives and the franchise in, 66-67.
South African Provinces, convergences of, 168.
South African Railway Rates Conference (1908), 216.
South African War, 172, 174, 182.
Spain and her possessions, 131.
Spreading: the tendency to, in Pan-Angle history, 100-161, 172.
State Church, the, 74.
Stead, W. T., cited, 190.
Suffrage, the, 63, et seq.
Local differences in, 64-65.
Local option, 65.
Negro, 66-67.
Sex disqualification, the, 64.
Switzerland, Inter-cantonal, arbitration in, 216.
Taft, W. H., Popular Government, cited, 60 n. 3; quoted, 65.
Taunton liberty pole, the, 10, 11.
Taxation and representation, 12, 13, 209.
Tendencies, 160 et seq.
Revealed in Pan-Angle history, 160.
Teutonic: invasion of Britain, 4; system of government, 113-114, 116, 117.
Texas, 49 n. 1, 82.
Thayer, J. B., John Marshall, quoted, 102, 103.
Times, The, quoted, 120 n. 1.
Transvaal, 138.
Indian question, 125.
Transvaal Leader, cited, 132 n. 1.
Trusts or combinations, 52.
Unconstitutional: different meanings of the word in Great Britain and in United States, 104-108.
{244}
United Empire, 168 n. 2.
United States, the, 1, 9, 16, 45, 83 n. 2, 178, 179, 180, 228. See also under American.
Administration, the. See Government.
Centralization, the demand for, in, 170.
Colonies, federal government of, 189.
Conference of Governors in, 171 and n. 2, 172.
Conservation in, 171.
Electoral College, 106, 111 and n., 112.
Executive, the, 116.
Federal Constitution of, 99-103 passim, 106, 107, 109 and n.
Federal Government of, 90, 111-118 passim, 170-172, 189, 193, 200-201.
Immigration, 22, 23, 24 n. 1.
Law in, similar to the law of England, 70; appointment of the judiciary, 114.
Secession movement in, 165; sacrifices to preserve the Union, 168, 173; the War of Secession, 150, 166-168, 172, 174.
Senators, indirect election of, 60.
State governments in, 65, 114.
States rights, the demand for, 170.
United States: Upper House, election to, 109, 110.
United States and British Isles, effect of federation on sources of disagreement between, 125 et seq.; treaties between, 182-183.
United States and the Britannic nations, 182, 230-231.
Vancouver Island, 210 n.
Virginia, settlement of, 8.
The House of Assembly in, 9, 59.
Voltaire, treatise on Toleration, cited, 34.
Washington, George, cited, 107; quoted, 225.
Webster, Noah, 34.
William the Conqueror, 5, 55.
Willson, Beckles, The Great Company, cited, 49 n. 2.
Wilson, Governor (of Kentucky), 171 n. 2.
Wilson, Woodrow, Mere Literature, quoted, 95, 166-168; The State, quoted, 107, 114 n., 118 n.
Witenagamot, the, 55, 57, 61.
Women's share in American colonization, 51 and n. 2.
Worsfold, W. B., The Union of South Africa, quoted, 67, 69.
Yellow races, the, 140 et seq.
[Illustration: Pan-Angles World Map]
[Transcriber's Notes:
All spellings have been preserved as printed. The appearance of [sic] is as printed in the source book.
Footnotes have been numbered as "ppp-nn", where "ppp" is the page number and "nn" is the footnote's number on that page. This matches the original Index entries.
Footnote 30-1 was not numbered in the source book, nor was there a referring footnote number in the source text on page 30. ]
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