The Leading Facts of English History Part 66

The rejection of the Budget by the House of Lords (S629) caused a new Parliamentary election (1910). The Liberal Party with the Labor Party again won the victory, but with a decidedly diminished majority.

Mr. Asquith, the Liberal Prime Minister, declared that the policy of the Liberal Government forbade any concessions whatever to the Lords.

The Lords thought it unwise to carry the contest further, and when the new Parliament met they bowed to the inevitable and reluctantly voted to accept the Budget,--land taxes and all.[2]

[2] The Liberal Party in power threatened, in case the Lords continued to refuse to accept the Budget, that they would either request the King to create a sufficient number of Liberal Peers to carry it (S582), or that they would make the country go through another election.

631. New Wars.h.i.+ps; a New Domesday Book; Death of King Edward.

This acceptance of the Budget made the Government feel reasonably sure that it would get the 16,000,000 pounds required to pay for eight new battles.h.i.+ps (S629). It also encouraged the War Department to spend a considerable sum in experimenting with military airs.h.i.+ps as a means of defense against invasion. Great Britain, like Germany, believes that such vessels have become a necessity; for since a foreigner flew across the Channel and landed at Dover (1909), England has felt that her navy on the sea must be supplemented by a navy above the sea. Two of these government airs.h.i.+ps are now frequently seen cricling at express speed around the great dome of St. Paul's.

The Government also began preparations for the compilation of a new Domesday Book (S120), which should revalue all the land in the British Isles, in order to establish a permanent vasis for increased taxation.[1] The House of Commons furthermore took up the debate on adopting measures for limiting the power of Lords to veto bills pa.s.sed by the Commons. While they were so engaged King Edward died (May 6, 1910); his son was crowned in 1911, with the t.i.tle of George V.

[1] The last general valuation of the land was made in 1692; it was then fixed at 9,000,000 pounds. The land tax, based on this valuation, has yielded about 2,000,000 pounds annually. The Government expects that the new valuation will yield much more.

In the summer of 1911 Mr. Asquith, the Liberal Prime Minister, after prolonged and heated discussion, forced the House of Lords to accept the Veto Bill, which is now law. He did this by using the same threat which enable Earl Grey to carry the Reform Bill of 1832 (S582). The Veto Act makes it impossible for the House of Lords to defeat any Public Bill which the House of Commons has pa.s.sed for three successive sessions, extending over a period of not less than two years. This momentous Act was pa.s.sed at a critical time when the great Dockers Strike had practically closed the port of London, and had cut off the chief food supply of the city. A little later, the Prime Minister pa.s.sed the Salary Bill, which pays the members of the House of Commons 400 pounds annually (S591). Next, the Government pa.s.sed (1911) the Workmen's Compulsory Insurance Bill against sickness and unemployment. The worker and his employer contribute small sums weekly, the Government gives the rest. The law has an excellent motive.

632. General Summary of the Development of the English Nation.

Such is the condition of the English nation in the twentieth century and in the reign of King George V. Looking back to the time when Caesar landed in Britain, we see that since that period an island which then had a population of a few thousand "barbarians" (SS4, 18) has gradually become the center of a great and powerful empire (SS14, 15).

The true history of the country began, however, not with Caesar's landing, but with the Saxon invasion in 449, about five centuries later. Then the fierce blue-eyed German and Scandinavian races living on the sh.o.r.es of the Baltic and North Seas took possession of Britain.

They, with the help of the primitive British, or Celtic, stock, laid the foundation of a new nation. Their speech in a modified form, their laws, and their customs became in large degree permanent.

Later, missionaries from Rome converted this mixed population to the Christian faith. They baptized Britain with the name England, which it has ever since retained (S50).

In the eleventh century the Normans, who sprang originally from the same stock as the Northmen and Saxons, conquered the island. They grafted onto the civilization which they found there certain elements of Continental civilization (S126). Eventually the Saxon yeoman and the Norman knight joined hands and fortunes, and became one people (S192).

This union was first unmistakable recognized in the provisions of Magna Carta (S199). When in 1215 the barons forced King John to grant that memorable doc.u.ment they found it expedient to protect the rights of every cla.s.s of the population. Then n.o.bles, clergy, farmers, townsmen, and laborers whether bond or free, stood, as it were, shoulder to shoulder.

The rise of free towns marked another long step forward (S183). That movement secured to their inhabitants many precious privileges of self-government. Then the Wat Tyler insurrection of a subsequent period (S251) led gradually to the emanc.i.p.ation of that numerous cla.s.s which had long been in partial bondage (S252).

Meanwhile the real unity of the people clearly showed itself at the time when the Crown began to tax the poor as well as the rich. The moment the King laid hands on the tradesman's and the laborer's pockets they demanded to have their share in making the laws. Out of that demand, made in 1265, rose the House of Commons (SS213, 217). It was a body, as its name implies, composed of representatives chosen mainly from the people and by the people.

Next, after generations of arduous struggle, followed by the King's grant of the Pet.i.tion of Right (S432) and then by the great Civil War (SS441, 450), it was finally settled that the House of Commons, and the House of Commons alone, had complete power over the nation's purse. From that time the King knew, once for all, that he could not take the people's money unless it was granted by the people's vote (S588).

After the flight of James II Parliament pa.s.sed the Bill of Rights in 1689 and in 1701 the Act of Settlement (S497). These two revolutionary measures wrought a radical change in the government of England. They deliberately set aside the old order of hereditary royal succession and established a new order which made the King directly dependent on the people for his t.i.tle and his power to rule (S497). About the same time, Parliament pa.s.sed the Toleration Act, which granted a larger degree of religious liberty (S496), and in 1695 the House of Commons took action which secured the freedom of the press (S498).

Less than thirty years afterwards another radical change took place.

Hitherto the King had appointed his own private Council, or Cabinet (S476), but when George I came to the htrone from Germany he could speak no English. One of the members of the Cabinet became Prime Minister in 1721, and the King left the management of the government to him and his a.s.soaciates (S534).

Two generations later another great change occurred. Watt's invention of a really practical steam engine in 1785, together with the rapid growth of manufacturing towns in the Midlands and the North of England, brought on an "Industrial Revolution" (S563). A factory population grew up, which found itself without any representation in Parliament. The people of that section demanded that this serious inequality be righted. Their persistent efforts compelled the pa.s.sage of the great Reform Bill of 1832. That measure (S582) broke up the political monopoly hitherto enjoyed in large degree by the landholders, and distributed much of the power among the middle cla.s.ses.

The next important change took place at the accession of Victoria (1837). The principle was then finally established that the ruling power of the government does not center in the Crown but in the Cabinet (S534). Furthermore, it was settled that the Prime Minister and his Cabinet are responsible solely to the House of Commons, which in its turn is responsible only to the expressed will of the majority of the nation (S587).

In the course of the next half century the Reform Bills of 1867 and 1884 extended the suffrage to the great majority of the population (S600). A little more than twenty years later, in 1906, the combined Liberal and Labor parties gained an overwhelming victory at the polls. This secured the workingmen fifty-four seats in Parliament (S628), whereas, up to that time, they had never had more than three or four. It then became evident that a new power had entered the House of Commons. From that date the nation has fully realized that although England is a monarchy in name, yet it is a republic in fact.

The slow progress of time has at length given to the British people-- English, Scotch, Welsh, and Irish--the great gift of practical liberty; but along with it, it has imposed that political responsibility which is always the price which must be paid for the maintenance of liberty.

633. Characteristics of English History; the Unity of the English-Speaking Race; Conclusion.

This rapid and imperfect sketch shows what has been accomplished by the people of Britain. Other European peoples may have developed earlier, and made, perhaps, more rapid advances in certain forms of civilization, but none have surpa.s.sed, nay, none have equaled, the English-speaking race in the practical characer and permanence of its progress.

Guizot says[1] that the true order of national development in free government is, first, to convert the natural liberties of man into clearly defined political rights; and, next, to guarantee the security of those rights by the establishment of forces capable of maintaining them.

[1] Guizot's "History of Representative Government," lect. vi.

Nowhere do we find better ill.u.s.trations of this truth than in the history of England, and of the colonies which England has planted.

For the fact cannot be too strongly emphasized that *in European history England stands as the leader in the development of const.i.tutional Government* (SS199, 497). Trial by jury (S176), the legal right to resist oppression (S261), legislative representation (SS213, 217), religious freedom (S496), the freedom of the press (S498), and, finally, the principle that all political power is a trust held for the public good,[1]--these are the a.s.sured results of Anglo-Saxon growth, and the legitimate heritage of every nation of Anglo-Saxon descent.

[1] Macaulay's "Essay on Sir Robert Walpole."

It is no exaggeration to say that the best men and the best minds in England, without distinction of rank or cla.s.s, are now laboring for the advancement of the people. They see, what has never been so clearly seen before, that the nation is a unit, that the welfare of each depends ultimately on the welfare of all, and that the higher a man stands and the greater his wealth and privileges, so much the more is he bound to extend a helping hand to those less favored than himself.

The Socialists, it is true, demand the abolition of private property in land and the nationalizing not only of the soil but of all mines, railways, waterworks, and docks in the kingdom. Thus far, however, they have shown no disposition to attain their objects by violent action. England, by nature conservative, is slow to break the bond of historic continuity which connects her present with her past.

"Do you think we shall ever have a second revolution?" the Duke of Wellington was once asked. "We may," answered the great general, "but if we do, it will come by act of Parliament." That reply probably expresses the general temper of the people, who believe that they can gain by the ballot more than they can by an appeal to force, knowing that theirs is

"A land of settled government, A land of just and old renown, Where freedom broadens slowly down, From precedent to precedent."[2]

[2] Tennyson's "You Ask Me Why."

It is impossible for the great majority of Americans not to take a deep interest in this movement, for we can never forget that English history is in a very large degree our history, and that England is, as Hawthorne likes to call it, "our old home."

In fact, if we go back less than three centuries, the record of America becomes one with that of the mother country, which first discovered (SS335, 421) and first permanently settled this, and which gave us for leaders and educators Was.h.i.+ngton, Franklin, the Adamses, and John Harvard. In descent by far the greater part of us are of English blood or of blood akin to it.[1] We owe to England--that is, to the British Isles and to the different races which have met and mingled there--much of our language, literature, law, legislative forms of government, and the essential features of our civilization.

In fact, without a knowledge of her history, we cannot rightly understand our own.

[1] In 1840 the population of the United States, in round numbers, was 17,000,000, of whom the greater part were probably of English descent. Since then there has been an enormous immigration, 40 per cent of which were from the British Isles; but it is perhaps safe to say that three quarters of our present population are those were were living here in 1840, with their descendents. Of the immigrants (up to 1890) coming from non-English-speaking races, the Germans and Scandinavians predominated, and it is to them, as we have seen, that the English, in large measure, owe their origin (SS37-39, 126). It should be noted here that the word "English" is used so as to include the people of the United Kingdom and their descendants on both sides of the Atlantic.

Standing on her soil, we possess practically the same personal rights that we do in America; we speak the same tongue, we meet with the same familiar names. We feel that whatever is glorious in her past is ours also; that Westminster Abbey belongs as much to us as to her, for our ancestors helped to build its walls and their dust is gathered in its tombs; that Shakespeare and Milton belong to us in like manner, for they wrote in the language we speak, for the instruction and delight of our fathers' fathers, who beat back the Spanish Armada and gave their lives for liberty on the fields of Marston Moor and Naseby.

Let it be granted that grave issues have arisen in the past to separate us; yet, after all, our interests and our sympathies, like our national histories, have more in common than they have apart. The progress of each country now reacts for good on the other.[2]

[2] In this connection the testimony of Captain Alfred T. Mahan, in his recent work, "The Problem of Asia," is worth quoting here. He says (p. 187), speaking of our late war with Spain: "The writer has been a.s.sured, by an authority in which he entirely trusts, that to a proposition made to Great Britain to enter into a combination to constrain the use of our [United States] power,--as j.a.pan was five years ago constrained by the joint action of Russia, France, and Germany,--the reply [of Great Britain] was not only a positive refusal to enter into such a combination [against the United States], but an a.s.surance of active resistance to it if attempted...Call such an att.i.tude [on the part of England toward the United States] friends.h.i.+p, or policy, as you will--the name is immaterial; the fact is the essential thing and will endure, because it rests upon solid interest."

If we consider the total combined population of the United States and of the British Empire, we find that to-day upwards of 150,000,000 people speak the English tongue and are governed by the fundamental principles of that Common Law which has its root in English soil.

This population holds possession of more than 15,000,000 square miles of the earth's surface,--an area much larger than that of the united continents of North America and Europe. By far the greater part of the wealth and power of the globe is theirs.

They have expanded by their territorial and colonial growth as no other people have. They have absorbed and a.s.similated the mult.i.tudes of emigrants from every quarter of the globe that have poured into their dominions.

The result is that the inhabitants of the British Isles, of Australia, of New Zealand, of a part of South Africa, of the United States, and of Canada practically form one great Anglo-Saxon race,[1] diverse in origin, separated by distance, but everywhere exhibiting the same spirit of intelligent enterprise and of steady, resistless growth.

Thus considered, America and England are necessary one to the other.

Their interests now and in the future are essentially the same. Bothe contries are virtually pledged to make every effort to maintain liberty and self-government, and also to maintain mutual peace by arbitration.

[1] Such apparent exceptions as the Dutch in South Africa, the French in Canada, and the Negroes in the United States do not essentially affect the truth of this statement, since in practice the people of these races uphold the great fundamental principles on which all Anglo-Saxon government rests.

In view of these facts let us say, with an eminent thinker[2] whose intellectual home was on both sides of the Atlantic: "Whatever there be between the two nations to forget and forgive, is forgotten and forgiven. If the two peoples, which are one, be true to their duty, who can doubt that the destinies of the world must be in large measure committed to their hands?"

[2] Dean Farrar, Address on General Grant, Westminster Abbey, 1885.