MODERN ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES.
CONDITION OF ENGLISH SOCIETY--MANUFACTURE OF GIN AND RUM--ORIGIN OF
METHODISM--ELOQUENCE OF WHITFIELD--JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY--REMARKABLE
TEACHINGS--ROBERT RAIKES--JOHN HOWARD--WILLIAM WILBERFORCE--MECHANICAL
INVENTIONS--GROWTH OF AMERICAN FREEDOM--THREE GREAT BATTLES--COOK'S
VOYAGES--EXTENSION OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE--GREATNESS OF
PITT--WASHINGTON'S EARLY LIFE--BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
"Westward the course of empire takes its way."
From the first settling of the North American colonies, the relations
between Europe and America were such that every great revolution
occurring in the parent country had its due effect in the colonies.
In 1688, just sixty-eight years after the sailing of the pilgrims,
another famous departure took place from the coast of Holland. It was
that of William, prince of Orange, coming to deliver England from
tyranny, and give a new course to English history. A powerful fleet and
army sailed with the prince, the wicked and foolish King James fled
from the people he had so long misruled, and William, prince of Orange,
with Mary his wife, were proclaimed joint king and queen of England.
With the revolution of 1688, a new spirit appears in England. Hitherto
English philosophy and literature were almost unknown upon the
continent. It was only after the revolution that we hear of foreigners
visiting England, learning English and seeking to understand English
life and character. Thus on the eve of the eighteenth century English
ideas took a {150} great stride forward. The people instead of the king
became the virtual rulers of the nation.
The preceding age had done its work. It had given to the world the
philosophy of Newton, the literature of Shakspeare, and Addison, Pope
and Swift, the political agitation of Cromwell, and the colonization
of America. The avenues of knowledge were thus opened to the masses.
Even the dullest and most backward minds began to have notions of
literature and the discoveries of science. The ancient forms of royalty
and chivalry had lost their prestige and stood in the shady background
of the past. A new world of citizens henceforth occupies the ground,
attracts the gaze, imposes its ideas on the public manners and stamps
its image on the minds of men. In 1709 appeared the first newspaper,
a sheet as big as a man's hand which the editor did not know how to
fill. At the present time there are more than 1,000,000,000 copies of
newspapers published in the English language annually, many of which
contain more reading matter in a single number than the whole New
Testament scriptures. With the increase of intelligence the power of
the people began to be felt.
Increased intelligence brought political reforms, and these in turn
were followed by a reform in morals and manners. During the reign of
the Stuarts the morals of the people had been extremely low. As an
illustration might be mentioned the disrespect shown to the clergy. A
parish priest was only permitted to dine at the second table, after his
superiors (?) had been served. He might fill himself with the beef and
cabbage, but did not dare to touch the better dishes until invited to
do so by the hostess. A law had been passed during the reign of Charles
II., that no clergyman should marry a servant-girl without the consent
of her mistress. Most of the prominent statesmen during the previous
half century were unbelievers in any form of religion. Such were the
irreligious tendencies of the age, that drunkenness and foul talk were
considered no reproach to Robert Walpole, prime minister of England.
Purity of life was sneered at by the nobility as "out of fashion."
For example, Lord Chesterfield, in his letters to his son (which were
designed for publication), {151} instructs him in the art of seduction,
as part of a polite education.
At the lower end of the social scale lay the masses of the extremely
poor. They were ignorant and brutal to a degree which it is hard to
conceive. The manufacture of gin and rum had been discovered in 1684;
and intemperance overran the nation as a plague. Tavern-keepers, on
their sign-boards, invited the people to come and get drunk for a
penny. For two pence they might get dead drunk, and have "a place to
lie down with no charge for straw." Much of this social degradation was
due, without doubt, to the apathy and sloth of the religious teachers.
Such was the condition of society when a remarkable religious revival
began in a small knot of Oxford students whose revolt against the
wickedness of the times expressed itself in enthusiastic religious
worship and an austere and methodical regularity of life, that gave
them the nickname of "Methodists."
Of these students, three soon attracted special attention by their
religious fervor and even extravagance. One of these, George Whitfield,
became the greatest orator. His voice was soon heard in the wildest
and most barbarous corners of the land, among the bleak moors of
Northumberland, in the dens of London, and in the dark and gloomy mines
of Cornwall. Whitfield's preaching was such as England had never heard
before, theatrical, extravagant, sometimes common-place, but winning
favor by its earnestness and deep tremulous sympathy for the sins and
sorrows of mankind.
He was no common enthusiast who could so eloquently plead the cause of
the erring and unfortunate as to draw out the last cent from the cool
and calculating Franklin, and command admiration from the fastidious
and skeptical Horace Walpole; or who could look down, from the top of
a green knoll at Kingswood, on twenty thousand colliers, grimy from
the Bristol coal-pits, and see as he preached, the tears making white
channels down their blackened cheeks.
On the rough and ignorant masses to whom they spoke, the effects of
Whitfield and his co-workers were mighty both for good and ill. Their
preaching stirred a passionate hatred in {152} the hearts of their
opponents. Their lives were often in danger; they were mobbed, ducked,
stoned and smothered with filth; but the enthusiasm they aroused among
their followers was equally intense.
Very important to the cause was Charles Wesley, a student at Oxford,
who came as the sweet singer of the movement. His hymns expressed the
fiery zeal of its converts, in lines so chaste and beautiful that
many of the cultured classes were numbered among the adherents of the
movement.
But most important of all was the elder brother, John Wesley, an
ordained minister of the Church of England, who by his learning, energy
and power of organization gave stability to the movement. No man of
that age surpassed him in self-denial and trust in God. With all his
extravagance and superstition, Wesley's mind was essentially practical
and orderly. He, beyond most men of his age, saw that he lacked divine
authority to found a church. Hence to the last he clung passionately to
the Church of England, and looked upon the sect he had formed as only a
lay society or branch in full communication with the parent church.
For a long time he would not permit his co-workers to administer the
sacrament of the Lord's supper; as he considered they did not possess
the requisite authority. Wesley saw with wonderful clearness a fact
that no one of that age perceived or, if he did, had not the moral
courage to declare. He perceived the universal as well as the total
apostasy of the so-called Christian church. In his 94th sermon he says;
"The real cause why the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost were no
longer to be found in the Christian church was _because the Christians
were turned heathens again, and had only a dead form left_." In another
place he says: "A string of opinions is no more Christian faith, than
a string of beads is Christian holiness." The justifying faith which
he considered so essential and taught so earnestly, implied a personal
revelation--an inward evidence of Christianity. Thus he unconsciously yet
logically taught the insufficiency of the ancient scriptures as a guide
to salvation. It also implied the need of new and continuous revelation
as necessary for the vitality and growth of the church. Wesley
continued his labors for upwards of fifty-two {153} years, traveling
and preaching until within a short time of his death, which occurred
in his eighty-eighth year. At the time of his death, his followers
numbered more than one hundred thousand. Now they are estimated at
nearly eight millions.
[Image: John Wesley.]
It was the teachings and practices of the Puritans, the Quakers and
the Methodists that gave to England that great moral impulse which led
to the establishment of Sunday schools by Robert Raikes of Gloucester,
the reforming of prisons by John Howard, and the abolition of the
slave trade by William Wilberforce. The ardor and perseverance which
these men showed in behalf of the poor, the wronged and the afflicted,
excited a wave of human sympathy throughout the length and breadth
of the civilized world. It is from this time that may be dated the
commencement of charity schools, foundling hospitals, insane asylums
and other institutions {154} of benevolence for which English-speaking
people are now so famous.
While the moral and religious movements were in progress, others of
a political or scientific nature, were pressing forward with rapid
strides. Amid the tumult of these times, James Brindley was quietly
making England a net work of canals. Watt was silently perfecting his
invention of the steam-engine and Adam Smith was working out the great
problem of political and industrial economy, which has made England and
her colonies the leading commercial and manufacturing countries of the
world.
Meanwhile John Hargreaves, Richard Arkwright and Samuel Crompton, by
their inventions were revolutionizing the art of spinning and weaving.
However, these ingenious devices would have done but little had it not
been for the new and inexhaustible labor force of the steam-engine
which had then come into general use. One of the first effects was to
develop the iron manufactures of England. Previous to 1750, England and
her colonies imported four-fifths of their iron goods from Sweden; now
they produce more than four-fifths of all the iron used in the world.
The influence of the steam-engine and spinning jenny on the
civilization of England is beyond human calculation. Mines were
developed, manufactories established and the whole national industry
so increased that the population of England was twice doubled in less
than fifty years. At the same time agriculture was so improved that
one-sixth of the people raised food for the remainder.
While these events were transpiring in England they had their due
influence in the colonies. Europe saw for the first time a state
growing up amidst the forests of the west, where religious freedom had
become complete. Religious tolerance had been brought about by strange
circumstances--a medley of religious sects such as the world had never
seen before. New England was the stronghold of the Puritans. In some
of the southern colonies the Episcopal church was established by law
and the bulk of the settlers clung to it. The Roman Catholics formed
a large majority in Maryland. Pennsylvania was a state of Quakers.
Presbyterians and Baptists fled from {155} persecution to colonize
New Jersey; Lutherans and Moravians from Germany abounded among the
settlers of Georgia, and the persecuted Huguenots of France had fled
from their native land to the forests of Carolina. In such a chaos of
creeds, religious persecution was well nigh impossible.
As there were but few large fortunes among the colonists, so nearly all
had the same social standing and privileges. Education was general. It
was the proud boast of many of the colonies that every man and woman
could read and write.
Such was the condition of the colonies in 1748, when Montesquieu, the
wisest and most reflecting statesman of France, declared that a free,
prosperous and great people were forming in the forests of America.
The hereditary dynasties of the old world were all unconscious of the
rapid growth of this power, which was soon to involve them in its new
and prevailing influence. The hour of revolution was at hand, promising
freedom to conscience and dominion to intelligence. From the fragments
of European society--fragments that in some instances had been
considered worthless--humanity in the providence of God was building up
a self-governing and democratic dominion.
About the middle of the eighteenth century occurred three famous
battles which did much to determine the destinies of men for ages to
come. The first of these, was the great victory achieved by the English
arms on the plains of Plassey, June 23, 1757, which laid the foundation
of the empire of British India, an empire which comprises more than
one hundred and twenty millions of people. The second was the victory
of Rossbach, which determined the re-union of the German states and
laid the foundation of the present German empire. The third was the
triumph of Wolfe on the plains of Abraham, September 13, 1759, for with
it virtually began the history of the United States. France had ever
been an enemy whose dread had knit the colonists together and to the
mother country, England. By wresting Canada from her grasp and breaking
through the line with which France had barred the British colonists
from the basin of the Mississippi, Pitt laid the foundation of the
great republic of the West. {156} Hitherto the possessions of France
in North America had been twenty times as vast as those of England;
henceforth they were destined to dwindle into insignificance and
eventually become extinct.
The close of the seven years' war, which ended at the peace of Paris,
1763, was a turning point in the history of the world. England was no
longer a mere European power. Her future action lay in a wider sphere
than that of Europe. Mistress of North America, the future mistress of
India, claiming as her own the empire of the seas, Britain suddenly
towered high above rival nations whose interest and position, being on
a single continent, doomed them to comparative insignificance in the
after history of mankind.
It is this that gives William Pitt so peculiar a position among the
statesmen of the world. It was his faith, his daring--shall we not say
his inspiration?--that called the English people to a sense of the
destiny that lay before them.
With England on one side and her American colonies on the other, the
Atlantic was dwindling into a mere strait within the British realms;
but beyond it to the westward lay a vast ocean where the British flag
was almost unknown. True the Pacific ocean had been discovered by
Balboa in 1513, and crossed by Magellan in 1521. Dutch voyagers had
discovered that "Great Southern Land," which they had named New Holland
and also the northern extremity of New Zealand. But the discoveries had
remained unheeded for more than a century.
It was not till 1778 that, under Pitt's direction, Captain Cook was
sent into the Pacific ocean on a voyage of discovery. He discovered the
Sandwich Islands circumnavigated New Zealand and took possession of
Australia, or New Holland, in the name of the English king. The reports
which he published of that vast ocean and those far-off islands, of
their coral reefs, and palms, and bread-fruit, and gum trees, and
kangaroos, and tattooed warriors, awoke an interest in the minds of
the English concerning this world of wonders. They saw in all this a
vast realm opened for the expansion of the English race, and English
civilization.
{157} The extension of the English language over vast territories and
populations is without a parallel in the history of the world. Fully
one-fifth of the surface of the globe and one-fourth of its population
are under the dominion of England and the United States. The English
language is now spoken, and English and American literature is read in
every zone.
"They spread where Winter piles deep snows on bleak Canadian plains,
And where on green Pacific isles eternal summer reigns.
They glad Acadia's misty coasts, Jamaica's glowing isle,
And bide where gay with early flowers green Texan prairies smile.
"They dwell where Californian brooks wash down their sands of gold,
And track the Frazier's swelling flood thro' sunset valleys rolled;
They're found in Borneo's camphor groves, on shores of fierce Malay,
In valleys washed by Ganges' flood where Ceylon's zephyrs stray.
"Old Albions laws, Columbia's songs rejoice the captive's limbs;
The dark Liberian soothes her child with English cradle hymns,
Tasmanian maids are wooed and won, in gentle Saxon speech.
Australian boys read Crusoe's life, by Sidney's sheltered beach.
"They speak to men so far apart, that while this praise we sing,
Some may rejoice with autumn fruits, others with flowers of spring,
They speak with Shakspeare's searching thoughts and Bryant's lofty mind,
With Alfred's laws and Franklin's lore, to cheer and bless mankind."
Who does not see a marvelous wisdom in all this? The language thus
widely spread was destined to be the medium by which the gospel is to
be spread in all the nations of the earth. Who does not perceive that
the statesmanship of Pitt was one of the great instrumentalities for
the execution of the divine purposes? Like all great men, Pitt was in
advance of the age in which he lived. But England could not forget the
eminent services of him, who had done so much to promote her greatness.
The ashes of Pitt (now best known as the earl of Chatham) repose in
Westminster Abbey, the burial place of {158} the kings of England.
History will declare that among statesmen, few have left a more
stainless, none a more splendid name.
While these leading events were transpiring around them two remarkable
persons were developing in the American colonies. One of these was
George Washington, the other, Benjamin Franklin.
Washington was born in 1732. His father, a gentleman of good fortune,
died when his future illustrious son was only eleven years of age.
Upon Washington's mother devolved the care of his early education.
She was a devout woman, of excellent sense and deep affections, yet
of a temper which could brook no shadow of insubordination. Under her
rule--gentle and yet strong, George learned obedience and self-control.
In boyhood he gave remarkable promise of those excellencies which
distinguished his mature years. His person was large and powerful. He
was accustomed to labor, which gave him endurance to perform the work
that lay before him. His education was limited to the common English
branches, mathematics and land surveying. In his eighteenth year he was
employed by the government as surveyor of public lands. Many of his
measurements are still on record, and long experience has established
their unvarying accuracy. A massive intellect and an iron strength of
will were given to him, with a gentle, loving heart, dauntless courage,
and loftiness of purpose. He possessed, in a wonderful degree, clear
perceptions of his duty, and a deep insight into the wants of his time.
While Washington's boyhood was being passed on the banks of the
Potomac, Benjamin Franklin was toiling hard in the city of Philadelphia
to earn an honest livelihood. He edited a newspaper, bound books, made
ink, sold rags, soap and coffee. He also published the first American
almanac. A _facsimile_ of the title page is given on the next page.
{159}
[Image: A Facsimile of the Title Page for Poor Richard, 1773 Almanac.]
{160}
[Image: Benjamin Franklin.]
He was a thriving man, but he was not ashamed to convey along the
streets in a wheelbarrow the paper which he bought for the purpose of
his trade. As a boy, he had been studious and thoughtful. As a man, he
was prudent, sagacious and trustworthy. When he had earned a moderate
competency he {161} ceased to labor at his business. Henceforth he
labored to serve his fellow-men. Philadelphia owes to Franklin her
university, her hospital, and her first and greatest library. It was he
who discovered the identity of lightning and electricity. Before the
revolution he was sent to England to plead the cause of the colonists.
During the war he was sent as ambassador to the court of France. At the
close of the war he was appointed one of the commissioners to negotiate
a treaty of peace between the United States and Great Britain. The last
great work of his life was to aid in the forming of the constitution of
the United States. He continued in public office till within six months
of his death and in public service till within twenty-four days of it.