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.