[Sidenote: Atlantic Cable, 1858.]
But there were other things besides famine and wars taking place in the
Kingdom of the young Queen. A greater and a subtler force than steam
had entered into the life of the people. A miracle had happened in
1858, when an electric wire threaded its way across the Atlantic, and
two continents conversed as friends sitting hand in hand.
[Sidenote: Daguerre's Discovery, 1839.]
Another miracle had then just been achieved in the discovery of certain
chemical conditions, by which scenes and objects would imprint
themselves in minutest detail upon a prepared surface. A sort of magic
seemed to have entered into life, quickening and intensifying all its
processes. Enlarged knowledge opened up new theories of disease and
created a new Art of healing. Surgery, with its unspeakable anguish,
was rendered painless by anaesthetics. Mechanical invention was so
stimulated that all the processes of labor were quickened and improved.
[Sidenote: First World's Fair, 1851.]
In 1851 the Prince Consort conceived the idea of a great Exposition,
which should under one roof gather all the fruits of this marvellous
advance, and Sydenham Palace, a gigantic structure of glass and iron,
was erected.
In literature, Tennyson was preserving English valor in immortal verse.
Thackeray and Dickens, in prose as immortal, were picturing the social
lights and shadows of the Victorian Age.
[Sidenote: Death of Prince Albert, 1861.]
In 1861 a crushing blow fell upon the Queen in the death of the Prince
Consort. America treasures kindly memory of Prince Albert, on account
of his outspoken friendship in the hour of her need. During the war of
the Rebellion, while the fate of our country seemed hanging in the
balance, we had few friends in England, where people seemed to look
with satisfaction upon our probable dismemberment.
We are not likely to forget the three shining exceptions:--Prince
Albert--John Bright--and John Stuart Mill.
[Sidenote: Suez Canal.]
It was while that astute diplomatist, Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield) was
Prime Minister, that French money, skill and labor opened up the
waterway between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. It would never do
to have France command such a strategic point on the way to the East.
England was alert. She lost not a moment. The impecunious Khedive was
offered by telegraph $20,000,000 for his interest in the Suez Canal,
nearly one-half of the whole capital stock. The offer was accepted with
no less alacrity than it was made. So with the Arabian Port of Aden,
which she already possessed, and with a strong enough financial grasp
upon impoverished Egypt to secure the right of way, should she need it,
England had made the Canal which France dug, practically her own.
[Sidenote: Victoria Crowned Empress of India, 1876]
Lord Beaconsfield had crowned his dramatic and picturesque Ministerial
career by placing a new diadem on the head of the widowed Queen, who
was now Empress of India. His successor, William Ewart Gladstone, the
great leader of the Liberal party, was content with a less showy field.
He had in 1869 relieved Ireland from the unjust burden of supporting a
Church the tenets of which she considered blasphemous; and one which
her own, the Roman Catholic, had for three centuries been trying to
overthrow. We cannot wonder that the memory of a tyranny so odious is
not easily effaced; nor that there is less gratitude for its removal,
than bitterness that it should so long have been.
[Sidenote: Disestablishment of Irish Branch of Church of England, 1869.]
The disestablishment of the English Church in Ireland was one of the
most righteous acts of this reign. Whether the great English Statesman
will be equally successful in securing Home Rule for that unhappy land,
upon which he has staked the final effort of his life, remains to be
seen.
The Irish question is such a tangled web of wrong and injustice
complicated by folly and outrage, that the wisest and best-intentioned
statesmanship is baffled. Whether the conditions would be improved by
giving them their own Parliament, can only be determined by experiment;
and that experiment England is not yet willing to try.
History affords few spectacles of its kind more impressive than Mr.
Gladstone at 86, with the ardor and energy of youth, battling for a
measure he believes so vitally necessary to the Nation. It is a pity
that for Americans his greatness is tarnished and belief in the
infallibility of his judgment shaken, by the memory that he upheld the
attack upon our National life in 1860; and that he, seemingly without
regret, prophesied our downfall.
The work of Parliamentary reform commenced in 1832 has moved steadily
on through this reign. By successive acts the franchise has extended
farther and farther, until a final limit is almost reached; and side by
side with this has been a corresponding increase in educational
facilities, "because," as a Peer cynically remarked, "we must educate
our Masters!"
So many reforms have been accomplished during this reign, the time
seems not far distant when there will be little more for Liberals to
urge, or for Conservatives and the House of Lords to obstruct. Monarchy
is absolutely shorn of its dangers. The House of Commons, which is the
actual ruling power of the Kingdom, is only the expression of the
popular will.
We are accustomed to regard American freedom as the one supreme type.
But it is not. The popular will in England reaches the springs of
Government more freely, more swiftly, and more imperiously, than it
does in Republican America. It comes as a stern mandate, which must be
obeyed on the instant. The Queen of England has less power than the
President of the United States. He can form a definite policy, select
his own Ministry to carry it out, and to some extent have his own way
for four years, whether the people like it or not. The Queen cannot do
this for a day. Her Ministry cannot stand an hour, with a policy
disapproved by the Commons. Not since Anne has a sovereign refused
signature to an Act of Parliament. The Georges, and William IV.,
continued to exercise the power of dismissing Ministers at their
pleasure. But since Victoria, an unwritten law forbids it, and with
this vanishes the last _remnant of a personal Government_. The end
long sought is attained.
The history of no other people affords such an illustration of a
steadily progressive national development from seed to blossom,
compelled by one persistent force. Freedom in England has not been
wrought by cataclysm as in France, but has unfolded like a plant from a
life within; impeded and arrested sometimes, but patiently biding its
time, and then steadily and irresistibly pressing outward; one leaf
after another freeing itself from the detaining force. Only a few more
remain to be unclosed, and we shall behold the consummate flower of
fourteen centuries;--centuries in which the most practical nation in
the world has steadily pursued an _ideal_! The ideal of individual
freedom subordinated only to the good of the whole.
The triumph of England has been the triumph not of genius, nor of
intellect, but of _character_. It is those cross-threads of
stubborn homely traits, the tenacity of purpose, the reluctance to
change, the adherence to habit, usage and tradition, which have
toughened the fabric almost to indestructibility. These traits are
illustrated in the persistence of the hereditary principle in the royal
line. We look in vain for another such instance. The blood of Cerdic,
the first Saxon "Ealdorman" (495), flows in the veins of Victoria. She
is 38th remove from Egbert, first Saxon King of consolidated England
(802), 26th from William the Conqueror (1066), and 9th in descent from
that picturesque and lovely criminal, Mary Stuart (1587). There have
been wars, and foreign invasions,--a Danish and a Norman conquest, the
overturning of dynasties, and Revolutions, and a "Protectorate," and
yet--there sits upon the throne to-day a Queen descended by unbroken
line from Cerdic the Saxon!
Queen Victoria is undoubtedly indebted to the wise counsel and guidance
of the Prince Consort in the early decades of her reign. Not one act of
folly has marred its even current. She has held up to the nation a high
ideal of wifehood, motherhood, and of domestic virtue. None of her
predecessors have bound their people to them with ties so human, her
griefs and experiences moving them as their own. We think of her more
as an exalted type of Woman, than as Sovereign of the most marvellous
Empire the World ever saw;--its area three times that of Europe,
representing every zone, all products, and every race!
How long England will be capable of sending out a vital current
sufficient to nourish such distant extremities none can tell; or
whether the far-off Colonies of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand will
increase their independent life, until they become detached
Sovereignties like the United States. If that day ever comes, like the
Mother of a generation of grown children, with independent homes of
their own,--England will sit with folded hands, her life-work done.
Let no American forget, that England before the Restoration is as much
our England as theirs. That the memories of Crecy, of Blenheim, of
Marston Moor and Naseby, are our great inheritance too. That Chaucer,
Milton, Shakespeare, belong to the humblest American as much as to
Victoria.
The branch has grown far from the parent tree since the 17th Century;
and the England of Tennyson and Herbert Spencer is only a very distant
cousin. She has not always treated us well, has not been chary of
criticism, nor prodigal of praise, nor did she sympathize with us in
the day of our peril and misfortune. But for all that--sharing the
same great heritage of race and of literature, speaking in the same
language the same thoughts and impulses, there must always exist
between us a tie, such as can bind us to no other nation upon the
earth.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Evolution of an Empire, by Mary Parmele