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.