The Leading Facts of English History Part 64

The continued agricultural depression ruined many tillers of the soil, and drove the rural population more and more into the already overcrowded towns. There they bid against the laboring men for work, and so reduced wages to the lowest point. If they failed to get work, they became an added burden on the poor rates, and taxes rose accordingly.

Should no remedy be found, and should land in England continue to go out of cultivation, it is difficult to see how the majority of proprietors can resist the temptation to break up and sell their estates. The tendency of an important act of Parliament (1894) is believed by many to work in the same direction.[1] It imposes an inheritance tax on the heirs to landed property, which they find it hard to meet, especially when their tenants have abandoned their farms rather than try to pay the rent.

[1] The Consolidated Death Duties Act.

To-day a few thousand wealthy families hold the t.i.tle deeds to a large part of the soil on which more than forty millions live. Generally speaking, the rent they demand does not seem to be excessive.[2] It is an open question whether England would be the gainer if, as in France, the land should be cut up into small holdings, worked by men without capital, and hence without power to make improvements.

[2] This is the opinion of the Royal Commission; but Gibbins's "Industry in England" (1896), p. 441, takes the opposite view.

618. The Colonial Expansion of England.

Meanwhile, whether from an economic point of view England is gaining or losing at home, there can be no question as to her colonial expansion. A glance at the accompanying maps of the world (see double map opposite and map facing p. 420) in 1837 and in 1911 shows the marvelous territorial growth of the British Empire.

When Victoria was crowned it had an area of less than three million square miles; to-day it has over eleven million, or more than one fifth of the entire land surface of the globe. England added to her dominions, on the average, more than one hundred and forty-five thousand square miles of territory every year of Victoria's reign.

Canada's wonderful growth in population and wealth is but one example. Australia began its career (1837) as a penal colony with a few s.h.i.+ploads of convicts; now it is a prosperous, powerful, and loyal patr of the Empire (S545). Later than the middle of the nineteenth century, New Zealand was a mission field where cannibalism still existed (1857); now it is one of the leaders in English civilization.

Again, when Victoria came to the throne (1837) the greater part of Africa was simply a geographical expression; the coast had been explored, but scarcely anything was known of the country back of it.

Through the efforts of Livingstone and those who followed him (1840- 1890), the interior was explored and the source of the Nile was discovered (1863). Stanley undertook the great work on the Congo River and the "dark continent" ceased to be dark. Trade was opened with the interior, and the discovery of diamond mines and gold mines in South Africa (1867, 1884) stimulated emigration. Railways have been pushed forward in many directions (S622), new markets are springing up, and Africa, once the puzzle of the world, seems destined to become one of the great fields which the Anglo-Saxon race is determined to control, if not to possess.

On the other hand, the British West Indies have of late years greatly declined from their former prosperity. The English demand for cheap sugar has encouraged the importation of beet-root sugar from Germany and France. This has reduced the market for cane sugar to so low a point that there has been but little, if any, profit in raising it in the West Indies;[1] but fruit is a success.

[1] See Brooks Adams's "America's Economic Supremacy."

619. England's Change of Feeling toward her Colonies.

One of the most striking features of the "Diamond Jubilee" celebration (S607) was the prominence given to the Colonial Prime Ministers.

There was a time, indeed, when the men who governed England regarded Canada and Australia as "a source of weakness," and the Colonial Office in London knew so little of the latter country that it made ridiculous blunders in attempting to address official despatches to Melbourne, Australia.[2] Even as late as the middle of the last century Disraeli, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote to Lord Malmesbury in regard to the Newfoundland fisheries, "These wretched colonies will all be independent, too, in a few years, and are a millstone around our necks."

[2] See Traill's "Social England," VI, 684.

Twenty years afterwards Disraeli, later Lord Beaconsfield, declared that one of the great objects he and his party had in view was to uphold the British Empire and to do everything to maintain its unity.

That feeling has steadily gained in power and was never stronger than it is to-day. Canada, Australia, and the other governing colonies (S625) have since responded by actions as well as words, and "Imperial Federation" has become something more than a high-sounding phrase (SS625, 626).

620. The Condition of Ireland; International Arbitration.

But to make such federation harmonious and complete, the support of Ireland must be obtained. That country is the only member of the United Kingdom whose representatives in Parliament refused, as a rule, to take part in the celebration of the Queen's reign. They felt that their island had never been placed on a true equality with its stronger and more prosperous neighbor. In fact, the Royal Commission, appointed to inquire into the relative taxation of England and Ireland, reported (1897) nearly unanimously that "for a great many years Ireland had paid annually more than 2,000,000 pounds beyond her just proportion of taxation."[1] It has been estimated that the total excess obtained during the Queen's reign amounted to nearly 100,000,000 pounds.

[1] McCarthy's "History of Our Own Times," V, 487.

Mr. Gladstone, the Liberal Prime Minister (1893) made a vigorous effort to secure "Home Rule" for Ireland. His bill granting that country an independent Parliament pa.s.sed the House of Commons by a very large majority, but was utterly defeated in the House of Lords.

Five years later (1898) Lord Salisbury, the Conservative Prime Minister, pa.s.sed a bill which, though it did not give Ireland "Home Rule," did give it local self-government on the same popular foundation on which it rests in England (S608) and Scotland.

Mr. Bryce, the British Amba.s.sador at Was.h.i.+ngton, recently said (1911) that he was convinced that the condition of the people of Ireland had greatly improved and was "still advancing," and that "before long nearly all the land wouyld belong to the cultivators" (S605).

The recognition of the principle of international arbitration by England in the Alabama case (S598), in the Bering Sea Seal Fisheries dispute (1893), in the Venezuela boundary controversy (1896), and in the Newfoundland Fisheries case (1910) proved that the English people saw that the victories of peace are worth as much to a nation as the victories of war. The Hague Peace Conference Treaty, ratified by Great Britain with the United States and the leading nations of Europe and the Far East (1899), provided for the establishment of a permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague between all of the great powers which signed it. All appeals to it, however, are entirely voluntary.

Ten years earlier, a proposition to establish such a court for the purpose of strengthening the cause of international peace would have been looked upon as "a splendid but delusive dream." To-day many of the ablest men on both sides of the Atlantic believe that the time is not far off when England and America will agree to settle by arbitration all questions which diplomacy cannot deal with, which may arise between them. Sir Edward Grey, Secretary for Foreign Affairs in Mr. Asquith's Liberal Cabinet, fears that the continued expenditure on larger and larger armaments "will end in international revolution."

On the other hand, those who are constantly advocating the building of more and bigger battles.h.i.+ps admit that the Peace Party presents strong arguments in support of its views, and that "the war against war" is making progress.

621. Death of Gladstone; the Cabot Tower; Centennial of the First Savings Bank, 1899.

Meanwhile, Mr. Gladstone, the great Liberal leader, died, full of years and honors, at his residence, Hawarden Castle, in North Wales (1898). The "Grand Old Man"--as his friends delighted to call him-- was buried in that Abbey at Westminster which holds so much of England's most precious dust. His grave is not far from the memorial to Lord Beaconsfield, the eminent Conservative leader, who was his lifelong rival and political opponent.

In the autumn (1898) the Cabot monument was opened at Bristol. It is a commanding tower, overlooking the ancient city and port from which John Cabot (S335) sailed in the spring of 1497. The monument commemorates that explorer's discovery of the mainland of the New World. An inscription on the face of the tower expresses "the earnest hope that Peace and Friends.h.i.+p may ever continue between the kindred peoples" of England and America.

In May of the next year, 1899, the one hundredth anniversary of the establishment of savings banks in Great Britain was celebrated. Near the closing year of the eighteenth century, 1799, Reverend Joseph Smith, Vicar of Wendover in Buckinghams.h.i.+re, invited the laborers of his parish to deposit their savings with him on interest. "Upon the first day of the week," said he, quoting St. Paul's injuction, "let every one of you lay by him in store."[1] He offered to receive sums as small as twopence. Before the end of the year he had sixty depositors. Eventually the government took up the scheme and established the present system of national postal savings banks.

[1] The quotation is from I Corinthians xvi, 2.

They have done and are doing incalculable good. At present there are over eleven million depositors in the United Kingdom. Most of them belong to the wage-earning cla.s.s, and they hold more than 212,000,000 pounds. In this case certainly the grain of mustard seed, sown a few generations ago, has produced a mighty harvest.

622. England in Egypt; Progress in Africa.

While busy at home, the English had been busy outside of their island. Five years after the opening of the Suez Ca.n.a.l (1869), Lord Beaconsfield, then the Conservative Prime Minister, bought nearly half of the ca.n.a.l property from the Governor of Egypt. Since then England has kept her hand on the country of the Pharaohs and the pyramids, and kept it there greatly to the advantage of the laboring cla.s.s.

About ten years later (1881), Arabi Pasha, an ambitious colonel in the native army, raised the cry, "Down with all foreigners--Egypt for the Egyptians!" Lord Wolseley defeated Arabi's forces, and the colonel was banished from the country.

Two years afterwards (1883) a still more formidable rebellion broke out in the Sudan,--a province held by Egypt. (See map facing p. 428.) The leader of the insurrection styled himself the Mahdi, or great Mohammedan Prophet. Then (1884) Gladstone sent General Gordon to withdraw the Egyptian troops from Khartoum, the capital of the Sudan.

The Mahdi's forces shut up the heroic soldier in that city, and before help could reach him, he and all his Egyptian troops were ma.s.sacred.

No braver or truer man ever died at the post of duty, for in him was fulfilled Wordsworth's eloquent tribute to the "Happy Warrior."[1]

[1] See Wordsworth's poems "The Happy Warrior."

Many years later, Lord Kitchener advanced against the new Mahdi, and at Omdurman his terrible machine guns scattered the fanatical Dervishes, or Mohammedan monks, like chaff before the whirlwind. The next autumn (1899) the British overtook the fugitive leader of the Dervishes and annihilated his army.

Since then British enterprise, British capital, and American inventive skill have transformed Egypt. The completion of the great dam across the Nile, at a.s.souan (1902), regulates the water supply for lower Egypt. The creation of this enormous reservoir promises to make the Nile valley one of the richest cotton-producing regions in the world.

The "Cape to Cairo" railway, which is more than half finished, is another British undertaking of immense importance. (See map opposite.) When ready for traffic, through its whole length of nearly six thousand miles, besides its branch lines, it will open all Eastern Africa, from the Cape of Good Hope to the Mediterranean, to the spread of commerce and civilization.

623. The Boers; the Boer War, 1899; Death of Queen Victoria (1901).

The history of the British in South Africa has been even more tragic than their progress in Egypt (S622).

In the middle of the seventeenth century (1652) the Dutch took possession of Cape Colony. (See map opposite.) Many Boers, or Dutch farmers, and cattle raisers emigrated to that far distant land. There they were joined by Huguenots, or French Protestants, who had been driven out of France. All of them became slaveholders. Early in the nineteenth century (1814) England purchased the Cape from Holland.

Twenty years later the English Parliament bought all the negroes held by the Boers and set them free.

Eight thousand Boers, disgusted with the loss of their slaves and with the small price they had received for them, left the Cape (1836) and pushed far northward into the wilderness. Crossing the Orange River, they founded the "Orange Free State." Another party of Boers, going still further north, crossed the Vaal River (a tributary of the Orange) and set up the Transvaal, or "South African Republic," on what was practically a slaveholding foundation. Later (1852), England, by a treaty known as the Sand River Convention, virtually recognized the independence of the settlers in the Transvaal, and two years afterwards made a still more explicit recognition of the independence of the Orange Free State.

The Zulus and other fierce native tribes bordering on the Transvaal hated the Boers and threatened to "eat them up." Later (1877), England thought it for her interest, and for that of the Boers as well, to annex the Transvaal. The English Governor did not grant the Boers the measure of political liberty which he had promised; this led to a revolt, and a small body of English soldiers was beaten at Majuba Hill (1881).

Mr. Gladstone, the Liberal Prime Minister, did not think that the conquest of the Transvaal, supposing it to be justifiable, would pay for its cost, and he accordingly made a treaty with the people of that country (1881). Lord Beaconsfield thought this policy a serious mistake, and that it would lead to trouble later on. He said, "We have failed to whip the boy, and we shall have to fight the man." The Gladstone Treaty acknowledged the right of the Boers to govern themselves, but subject to English control. Three years later (1884) that treaty was modified. The Boers declared that the English then gave up all control over them, except with regard to the power to make treaties which might conflict with the interests of Great Britain.

But this statement the English Government emphatically denied.[1]

[1] The preamble of the Convention or agreement made between England and the Boers in 1881 at Pretoria, the capital of the Transvaal, secured to the Boers "complete self-government, subject to the suzerainty of her Majesty," Queen Victoria. In the Convention of 1884, made at London, the word "suzerainty" was dropped; but Mr. Chamberlain, Colonial Secretary of Great Britain, contended that it was implied or understood. This interpretation of the agreement President Kruger of the South African or Boer Republic absolutely rejected.

The discovery of diamond fields in Cape Colony (1867) and of the richest gold mines in the world (1884) in the Transvaal stimulated a great emigration of English to South Africa. In a few years the "Outlanders"--as the Boers called all foreigners--outnumbered the Boers themselves. The "Outlanders," who worked the gold mines and paid nearly all the taxes, complained that the laws made by the Boers were unjust and oppressive. They demanded the right to vote. The Boers, on the other hand, refused to give them that right, except under arduous restrictions, lest the foreigners should get the upper hand in the Transvaal Republic, and then manage it to suit themselves.

Things went on from bad to worse. At length (1895) a prominent Englishman of Cape Colony, Dr. Jameson, armed a small body of "Outlanders," who undertook to get by force what they could not get by persuasion. The Boers captured the Revolutionists and compelled some of the leaders to pay, in all, about a million dollars in fines.

Dr. Jameson was sent to England and imprisoned for a short time. A committee appointed by Parliament investigated the invasion of the Transvaal and charged Cecil J. Rhodes, then Prime Minister of Cape Colony, with having helped on the raid. From this time the feeling of hatred between the Boers and the "Outlanders" grew more and more intense. Lord Salisbury, the Conservative Prime Minister, believed, with his party, that the time had come for decisive action on the part of the Government. The fires so long smoldered now burst into flame, and England resolved to fight to maintain her authority in the Transvaal.