{44}
Land to occupy or to trade with, the Pan-Angles have been able 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," inThe 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 toWhitaker'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 hisCompleat 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 YoungBoston Merchant: Being the Reflections and Comments of JosephBallard 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 TimesWeekly Edition, London, October 17, 1913.
[37-1]The TimesWeekly 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}
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 calledinquisitiveness, 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 theVictory. 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 powerfor 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.
The character of the law-making power has gradually altered. Since the days of Queen Anne no sovereign has attempted to veto a bill passed by Parliament.[58-1] Since 1834 no sovereign has dismissed a ministry,[58-2] nor has he formed one,[58-3] and the ministry has come to be responsible to the representative branch of Parliament alone. From 1835 to 1911 the presentative branch was purely a revising chamber.[58-4] Since 1911 it has been permitted to delay only, but not to prevent, the passing of a law desired by the representative branch, Parliament becoming thus in essence unicameral. The king and the lords hold positions of great historical and sentimental value; their personal influence may be as great as they can make it. The House of Commons, however, is now the sole power of legislation in the British Isles. It is hence fair to say that the presentative element is negligible in the national government of the British Isles.
Across the Atlantic went the developing political structures of the Pan-Angles. The colonists, in the simplicity of their social organization, approached early Teuton conditions. They {59} had the benefit, however, of all the experience the race had accumulated since that time. In New England from the earliest settlement till to-day the town meeting has been at the basis of government. It is the folk moot flourishing in new soil, and with the House of Lords (as it existed till 1911) could claim descent from the presentative government of our political forbears in the German forests. Of Virginia it is written that in "1619 a House of Assembly 'broke out' in the colony . . . then just twelve years old. In that Assembly we see thefirst-born child of the British Parliament, the eldest brother, so to speak, of the legislatures of the United States and of the English colonies of to-day. This Assembly was composed of a council and a body of twenty-two representatives from the eleven plantations, elected by the freeholders, imposing taxes and passing laws, meeting either annually or at frequent intervals."[59-1] In this manner were our notions of representative government transplanted.
A representative is not necessarily chosen by the people he represents.[59-2] In the early parliamentary days he often was not, but was arbitrarily appointed by the king. Since then the people have taken upon themselves the right of designating who is to represent them, and an increasingly large number of any given community has gained participation in that right. In some cases the people have arranged to make their choice indirectly. An example is the election prior to 1913 of United States senators by the people of the {60} state, but through the state legislature; another, is the appointment of the upper house, as in New Zealand, by the elected members of the lower house. But as evidence of the people's wish to keep control over their representatives, one may note the agitation for direct election in both these cases, and the virtual direct election of senators in some states of the United States, even before the Seventeenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States came into force in 1913.[60-1]
There are certain difficulties attendant upon representation. The agent may fail truly to represent, and the Pan-Angle people are constantly seeking to devise and perfect methods of minimizing this difficulty. One means toward that end has been sets of written instructions called constitutions,[60-2] adopted by the people and set over their representatives. The written Constitution of the United States and those of its original thirteen states were early edicts of the people restricting the power of the people's representatives. In the political talk of our times we find persistently recurring the words initiative, referendum, and recall.[60-3] What success will attend the movements for which they stand, movements which merely extend or return to ancient practices, it is too early to say. But the thing that is plain is that these are all efforts of the people to exercise their right to govern themselves presentatively, because they {61} think representation in present practice not entirely satisfactory.
Once presentative government over even a comparatively small area was impracticable because of the time necessary to cover distances. Now the results of an election involving millions of voters and extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific can be known a few hours after the closing of the polls. Burke thought the two months' sailing between Great Britain and America an insuperable obstacle to joint representation, although Franklin and Pownall disagreed with him.[61-1] Such is our speed of travel to-day that representatives from every Pan-Angle nation could reach North America in less than a month. Not only that, but thanks to electricity, a referendum could be held all over the Pan-Angle countries to-day as successfully as the town meeting was held a hundred years ago. And the decisions it reached would be known throughout the world in a fraction of the time that was needed for the deliberations of the Witan to reach the outskirts of the kingdom.
In what proportion the governments of the seven nations are presentative and in what proportion representative, it would be difficult to tell. Easy it is, however, to recognize these forms everywhere. Whether it is the adult population of New Zealand balloting on national prohibition; the men of a New England town meeting voting its school appropriation; or the members of the House of Lords discussing federation within the British Isles—we have a purely presentative bit of {62} governing. If it is the representatives of an Australian state voting on a minimum wage bill; the members of the British House of Commons passing a compulsory insurance act; or those of a Canadian provincial legislative assembly voting to exclude Asiatics, the principle is identical. Government in these cases is representative.
The tendency is towards an increase in the presentative element, as is evidenced by growing popular control. Not only our laws but our forms of government show this. The Pan-Angle notion of an executive at the time the first colonies were forming was drawn from a kingship which then meant a permanent tenure of office. The president of the United States who holds office for a fixed length of time was created after that model. He represents, but once elected cannot be recalled.[62-1] In the British Isles changes have come about, and the prime minister who now wields executive power can be recalled any day by the people speaking indirectly through their representatives, popular opinion swaying his party adherents to relinquish their efforts in his support.[62-1] In this respect the British Isles organization has proved more sensitive than the American to the spirit of the times.[62-2]
In our governments various individuals and classes, or what would in modern days be called "interests," struggle for supremacy. When a minority is successful we dub it aristocracy or privilege. At one time the king was the privileged minority. In 1215 the barons attacked the {63} privilege of this minority; the king asked to have the matter arbitrated by a third party. The barons, who apparently understood something about arbitration, refused. They also refused to give any assurance of their own good behaviour; Magna Carta was a check on the king only. Moreover "Magna Carta can hardly be said to have introduced any new ideas. As Pollock and Maitland (History of English Law) say 'on the whole the charter contains little that is absolutely new. It is restorative.'" [63-1] Since then many aristocrats have enjoyed special privileges: certain churches, certain forms of industry, holders of certain kinds of property. Against all these in turn the levelling force of democracy has been hurled. It can be said in general that we are travelling, though with a wise conservatism, away from the aristocratic to the democratic, by which is meant that privileges are becoming more seldom to the few and power more usual to the many. Democracy, it seems likely, is to be our common future. But, in the meanwhile, the present stage of all our governments may truly be said to be representative action with presentative sanction.
Allied to the question of government is that of suffrage. While all are subject to the government {64} of the land, only some take active part in determining what it shall be. And here, again, the individualism of the Pan-Angles is an insistent factor. Voters, whether so presentatively or representatively, have been in our past one of the privileged minorities—all individuals reckoned. They are so still. But by constantly receiving into their ranks bodies of newly enfranchised persons, they bid fair to become the majority. Social, religious, property, and educational disqualifications long kept many men from the suffrage. Many of these disabilities have been abandoned, some in all places, others in some places only. Sex alone has kept many from voting. This disqualification has been in places and in some respects removed. Whatever one may believe as to the wisdom of entrusting the ballot to the few or to the many, it has long seemed evident that the race was advancing toward universal adult male suffrage. Now many would say instead that the goal is universal adult suffrage.
On our respective paths toward this goal our various electoral units mark various stages of progress. Identical voting qualifications may be found half a world apart, while neighbouring groups differ. No two probably agree in every slight detail, though the range of dissimilarity is narrow. Certain property and educational tests are not infrequent, especially in the older Pan-Angle organizations. The newer ones, as a rule, are the more democratic. Women hold suffrage privileges in at least some respects very extensively, the newer communities again being more liberal in this. Plural voting obtains in the British Isles. {65} These local differences produce no confusion, but keep our progress orderly.
Of the United States it has been said, "There is a great advantage in having different State governments try different experiments in the enactment of laws and in governmental policies, so that a State less prone to accept novel and untried remedies may await their development by States more enterprising and more courageous. The end is that the diversity of opinion in State governments enforces a wise deliberation and creates alocus poenitentiaewhich may constitute the salvation of the Republic."[65-1] Equally might this have been stated of the effect of the diversity of opinion in the Pan-Angle units on the progress of the whole civilization.
In no regard more than in the question of suffrage, is seen the value and need of local option. It permits progress in whatever respect progress is possible, and prevents the misfortunes that accompany attempts to force progress where the time and conditions are not ripe for it. Through the exercise of local option the suffrage has been constantly extended, a bit here and a bit there, throughout Pan-Angle countries without seriously affecting our political stability. Any attendant shock is confined within narrow boundaries.[65-2] If Texas and Vermont, Tasmania and South Australia, Transvaal and Cape Province have different suffrage {66} requirements, it is because they differ in history and composition and hence in needs. The desires of their inhabitants could not be satisfied by a single law. To seek to establish one would be to estrange all and satisfy none.
The question of negro suffrage is in point. The northern states of America, where the negroes were comparatively few and were to some degree at least educated, felt favourably toward negro suffrage. After the Civil War the northern voters, acting through the central government, were able to give the vote to the negro, not only within their own borders but throughout the country. The results were most unfortunate. The Pan-Angle population of the southern states thereby lost their local autonomy. The men most fit to govern in these states were forced in self-defence to become law-breakers. It took many years to undo the mistake and re-establish there the will of the Pan-Angle community. Through the intelligence of the South in framing legislation, and the forbearance of the North in not overriding this legislation, it is now adequately accomplished. "Hitherto, no amount of legal ingenuity has sufficed to extract from the United States supreme court a direct, straightforward decision on the constitutionality of the 'grandfather' clauses in the election laws of many states, whereby the Negro voters have been disfranchised. The court has invariably disposed of cases designed to test the constitutionality of such laws on technical grounds."[66-1] South Africa, when the subject arose in Constitutional Convention, {67} was wiser. No part overruled another part. "In respect of the admission, of natives to the parliamentary franchise the practice of the Cape Colony was in direct conflict with that of the remaining colonies. As no agreement on the question of the admission or non-admission of natives to the Union franchise could be reached, the Convention decided that the franchise qualifications existing in the several colonies should stand as the franchise qualifications for the Union Parliament in the respective provinces of the Union. As the result of this compromise, while the native voters in the Cape Province obtained the Union franchise, practically no natives were admitted to this privilege in the remaining three provinces."[67-1] With certain temporary limitations, provision is made for the elimination of the vote of the coloured inhabitants of Cape Province.[67-2] It is now generally acknowledged that no community of Pan-Angles is to be forced to accept as voters those whom it considers non-assimilable.
Our law, like our language, has flowed from many sources and has been subjected to foreign influence. The colonists carried out with them the English common law, the sources of which "have been stated to be 'as undiscoverable as those of the Nile.'"[67-3] Quite different from this is the common law of Scotland, "based on the principles {68} of the Roman Civil and Canon law as applied and modified by a long series of statutes of the Scots Parliament and decisions of the Scottish courts. . . . A detailed comparison of the differences between the private law of England and Scotland would involve a survey of the whole domain of jurisprudence and would be the work of a lifetime;"[68-1] From 1642 to 1652 occurred the English Civil War, followed by the Commonwealth. In those stormy years which seem, as writes an Australian jurist, "to have anticipated almost every effort of modern political thought, scarcely any cry was more persistently raised by the reform party than the cry for reform of the law. It was the first great period of conscious law reform."[68-2] All the Pan-Angle nations, save only the British Isles and Newfoundland, had the stress of that period reflected in the history of their settlements, or were founded after the results of that war had been produced.
In the new countries the legal influence was predominantly British, but in some parts the colonists encountered communities of Europeans of other civilizations and of other legal theories. In Quebec and Louisiana they met French law; in western United States, Spanish; and in South Africa, a form of Roman-Dutch. Being elements in civilizations which only gradually have blended into that of the Pan-Angles, these laws have in greater or less measure survived. But in such {69} localities slowly the foreign law merges into that of the local Pan-Angles. As an example we have South Africa: "The local Dutch statute law was abandoned perforce as obsolescent, and replaced almost entirely by local enactments based upon the existing circumstances of the colony or founded upon English statutes, and the Roman-Dutch common law, broadly speaking, came to be administered concurrently with English common law. Nor was it surprising that, with judges and advocates alike versed in the decisions and practice of the English Courts, English principles were more and more closely woven into the fabric of the Colonial law. And apart from the influence of the 'case-law,' thus built up through the Colonial Reports, circumstances—or rather its greater capacity to satisfy the conditions of modern life—gave the regulation of the field of commercial intercourse almost exclusively to English law."[69-1] A like story might be told of French law in Louisiana. In other instances, where perhaps it receives no official recognition, non-English law has doubtless had its effect on what may be loosely called Pan-Angle law. As long as it suits the people and their needs better, so long a law exists regardless of its origin. But experience shows that the law of any Pan-Angle nation tends to conform to the practices of our whole civilization.
Because the English common law forms so large an element, and because it has among us been modified only by English-speaking people, the Pan-Angle law, though drawn from many sources, {70} still presents a certain homogeneity. "An English barrister . . . when once he enters an American court, or begins debating legal questions with American lawyers, . . . knows that he is not abroad, but at home; he breathes again the legal atmosphere to which he is accustomed. The law of America, he finds, is the law of England carried across the Atlantic, and little changed even in form. In all legal matters it is the conservatism, not the changeableness, of Americans which astonishes an English observer. Old names and old formulas meet us in every law court. Some twenty-six years ago there were to be found in Chicago in daily use forms of pleading which had long become obsolete in England."[70-1]
It is in our common tendencies, however, that the legal attitudes of the seven nations show most striking accord. Jenks, quoted earlier, concludes that we are in favour of uniformity, simplicity, greater freedom of the individual, and more fluidity of capital and labour, so much so, that "The courts will not even enforce effectively a contract of service. To do that, it is said, would be to legalize slavery, and the fact that the slave has become such by his own act makes no difference. It is considered that the perfect spontaneity of labour is of more value than the sacredness of contract."[70-2] Further than this, actual legislation repeats itself in the many Pan-Angle law-making bodies. The British Isles, {71} Massachusetts, New Zealand, and Australia test the merits or demerits of a minimum wage law. Compulsory insurance, old age pensions, maternity benefits, and arbitration statutes spring up everywhere. In efforts to solve some problems one part of the Pan-Angles leads; in others another part. Whether this is regarded as reform or experimentation is not under present discussion. The whole Pan-Angle civilization appears headed towards what is called by some social amelioration and by others paternalism. Whatever its true name, this race progress starts from a greater recognition of the individual and hopes for his greater comfort and welfare.
Of law among the Pan-Angles it may be said that it shows plainly its relation to English common law; that it is affected by local conditions resulting from historical causes; that it exhibits certain common tendencies, and among those is a regard for the individual and a passing from the viewpoint of status to that of contract.
All this can be seen in the laws regarding marriage and divorce. These, as well as our prejudices in such matters, are still largely determined by the dead hand of the Middle Ages. But the Teutonic ideal of the equality of the marriage partnership has survived the accumulation of dogma. Our release from its grip has not depended on the divorce of an English king, nor the accompanying religious schism. There is in us that which was destined to carry us up through the pains of changing social conditions to more satisfactory relations between the husband and the wife and society.
{72}
In our efforts to attain our ideals we are using many local laws. The British Isles have three: English, Scottish, and Irish. If the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man were considered, there would be six. Besides this, members of the royal family are subject to special restrictions. Newfoundland and New Zealand have marriage laws of their own. Canada has eleven, the Union of South Africa has four, and Australia six.[72-1] In the United States there are forty-eight. This makes a total of seventy-four sets of laws in the seven self-governing nations regarding who may marry and divorce and how.
These seventy-four different sets are not, however, strange and dissimilar. As in the case of suffrage, each one has many points identical with many others, and the range of variation is small. All are monogamous; all allow freedom of choice to the marrying parties; all hold marriage and divorce to be civil matters, and consider ministers and priests of religious denominations as civil officials for the legalizing of marriages. All prohibit marriage within certain degrees of relationship, the tendency being not to include among them the relationship-by-marriage impediments surviving from medieval practice, such as the various deceased spouse's brother or sister laws. The majority allow divorce, although in some, like Newfoundland and South Carolina, marriage is by law indissoluble. The trend at present seems to be towards safe-guarding marriage, but to make easier the means of divorce. Men and women are coming more {73} nearly to an equality before the law. Such enactments as that of New South Wales permitting a husband and wife to contract financially with each other shows the trend of our beliefs in the rights of any individual to be a distinct personality.
The sacred beauty of the marriage tie no people hold higher than do the Pan-Angles. With them it is not a status imposed from without, but the voluntary union of two individuals. John Stuart Mill voiced an aspiration of the entire Pan-Angle civilization when he wrote: "What marriage may be in the case of two persons of cultivated faculties, identical in opinions and purposes, between whom there exists that best kind of equality, similarity of powers and capacities with reciprocal superiority in them—so that each can enjoy the luxury of looking up to the other, and can have alternately the pleasure of leading and of being led in the path of development—I will not attempt to describe. To those who can conceive it, there is no need; to those who cannot, it would appear the dream of an enthusiast. But I maintain, with the profoundest conviction, that this, and this only, is the ideal of marriage; . . . "[73-1]
In no sphere is the individualism of the Pan-Angle more rampant than in matters of religion. Liberty of conscience to him is as necessary as liberty of body, and he has struggled to obtain it with the same persistency.
Once the status of nationality carried with it {74} automatic inclusion in the national church. A diversity of faiths in one nation was unthinkable. Any who refused to conform, in semblance at least, were considered by the group as outsiders and enemies, to be harried and pillaged, perhaps slaughtered. Later, though leave to live was granted to those of minority creeds, they were debarred from the exercise of certain civil privileges. In the British Isles, not until 1858 were Jews able to take oaths as members of the Houses of Parliament. Still later, though all might share equally in the duties and rights of citizenship, all were compelled to contribute directly or, indirectly to the support of the state church, and, unless openly avowing otherwise, were presumed to belong to it. Some Pan-Angles still linger in this stage—those, for example, who reside in Quebec or England. This is the significance of the state church to-day.
To the majority of the Pan-Angles, however, religion is a private matter—not a public matter. In short, it is a concern in which the majority are not to interfere with the minority and in which the minority are not asked to acquiesce in the feelings of the majority. This is a condition not easily achieved. Migration from the British Isles by no means ended all contention. "Everywhere, indeed, that British settlers went this strife of sects went with them."[74-1] Six out of the seven nations were founded after our British predecessors had begun the battle for religious freedom. All six have known state churches in one form or {75} another, sometimes with attendant persecutions. To-day five thrive without state churches. Even in Quebec and England taxation for the benefit of one's neighbour's church is the only penalty against free worshipping. Elsewhere, throughout the Pan-Angle world, one may hold any creed he will, and the state does not ask him to contribute to any church, nor does the state assist, or recognize one creed above another.
In certain places, notably portions of the United States, individualism in religion goes to extremes. In 1906 there were estimated to be in that country one hundred and eighty-six different kinds of Protestant churches,[75-1] some of them approaching the bizarre in character, others so like one another that the differences which divided them were scarcely discernible. Certain denominations were known only in very circumscribed areas.[75-2] There may be a certain extravagance in maintaining the large amount of equipment necessary for so many establishments. Apart from that, however, there seems to be no objection to the multitudinousness of American faiths that is not more than balanced by the benefits to the individual from free self-expression.
"After God had carried us safe toNew England, and wee had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, rear'd convenient places for {76} Gods worship, and setled the Civill Government: One of the next things we longed for, and looked after was to advanceLearningand perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministery to the Churches, when our present Ministers shall lie in the Dust."[76-1] So runs an account of the founding of one of the Pan-Angle universities as it was written in 1643. In a near-by city a public library was later established. On the building that shelters it to-day are inscribed these sentences: "The Commonwealth requires the education of the people as the safeguard of order and liberty," and "Built by the people and dedicated to the advancement of learning." Over the door are the words: "Free to all."
Here is evidenced the attitude of one early colony toward education, and it is typical of all. Education, education free to all, education compulsory on all, is the ideal in each of the six new nations. Free instruction is in some places offered to a child from the age of three, when he enters kindergarten, to any age at which he wishes to attend the university. For certain years, very generally six to fourteen, attendance at school is compulsory. There is no discrimination in regard to sex, and the classes are frequently co-educational. Parents are in the main allowed to send children to private and church schools when these are of satisfactory excellence; though in many places no such exist, and no stigma is in any way attached to the acceptance of free education. In many places no other sort has ever been dreamed of.
The British Isles meanwhile have not been {77} insensible to the same impulses. If popular education there has seemed to lag behind that of the younger nations, it is because the British Isles had not so free a field for change. There, a more complex social structure, and a tradition that envelops every department of life, interfere with the movement that would cast aside the old and adopt the new. Reforms must go slowly under such conditions, but the opportunity for education for all is there now an accomplished fact. In 1832 began the history of state education in the British Isles.[77-1] To-day elementary education is compulsory between the ages of five and fourteen,[77-2] and free, if one desires to take it so. Since 1902 public grants to secondary schools have opened their doors to certain numbers of non-paying pupils. The differences between the educational systems of the British Isles and those of the other English-speaking nations can now be said to be differences of method or degree only, but not of spirit.
Throughout our civilization, education opens the way to achievement, "the only real patent of nobility in the modern world."[77-3] The success or failure of the group is known to depend on the individual. He holds the ballot, makes the laws, enforces them; his religion is part of the faith of the land and determines the character of its composite; his ideals of marriage are expressed in the practice of the race. Organization and a few picked men do not control our destinies. To {78} ensure the future of the group we educate our citizens. We "advanceLearningand perpetuate it to Posterity" so that wisdom may be heard in our councils, and that ballots may register considered judgments.
As individualists the Pan-Angles have come to their present state. As individualists they must continue to work out their destiny. The right they prize most is the right to develop further in individualism. That right will be secured to Pan-Angles only when they have cause to fear no human power.
[48-1] Modern England, 50,916 square miles, and all Pan Angle nations and their dependencies, 16,897,126. Seepost, p. 81, note 1.
[48-2]Round Table, London, February 1911, p. 207: "1817, 1823, 1825, 1828, 1832, 1835, 1836."
[48-3] A. W. Jose,History of Australasia, Sydney, 1911, p. 187.
[49-1] Cf.Ency. Brit., vol. xxvi. pp. 692-693, on the story of Texas.
[49-2] For an account of which, see Beckles Willson,The Great Company(1667-1871), London, 1900.
[50-1]The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Cleveland, Ohio, September 2, 1913; but cf.United Empire, London, December 1913, p. 934 concerning a statue to his memory at Berbera.
[50-2]Ency. Brit., vol. ix. p. 556.
[50-3]Ibid., vol. iv. p. 660.
[51-1] Pierre Leroy-Beaulieu,Les Etats-Unis au Vingtième Siècle, Paris, 1904, pp. 37, 38, claims that the country to the south of the long Canadian frontier was opened up by successive waves of people of the same blood, the pioneers being almost entirely sons of pioneers.
[51-2]Ency. Brit., vol. xxvii. p. 691: "The new life bore most hardly upon women; and, if the record of woman's share in the work of American colonization could be fully made up, the price paid for the final success would seem enormous."
[51-3] W. M. West,Modern History, Boston, rev. ed., 1907, p. 300.
[52-1] C.A.W. Pownall,Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, pp. 400-401.Cf.Edmund Burke inConciliation with America, par. 37.
[52-2]Yearbook of the Commonwealth of Australia, Melbourne, No. 4, 1911, p.122.
[53-1] J. E. Le Rossignol and W. D. Stewart,State Socialism in New Zealand, London [1911], p. 17: "The people of New Zealand are not doctrinaires, and the academic question as to the proper spheres of governmental and individual activity is seldom discussed. The State has taken up one thing after another as the result of concrete discussion of concrete cases. Usually, if not invariably, abuses have been thought to exist, which the State has been called upon to remedy: the great landowners have stood in the way of closer settlement: wages have been low and conditions of labour bad: rates of interest, insurance premiums, prices of coal, and rents of dwellings have been thought to be high: the oyster beds have been depleted by private exploitation: taxation has fallen too heavily upon the poor: for one cause or another there has been complaint, complaint has grown into agitation, and agitation into legislation."
[55-1] Arthur Murphy,The Works of Cornelius Tacitus, London, 1793, vol. iv. p. 16.
[56-1]Ency. Brit., vol. xxiii. p. 110.
[56-2]Ibid., vol. xx. p. 837: "The Angles, Saxons and other Teutonic races who conquered Britain brought to their new homes their own laws and customs, . . . and a certain rude representation in local affairs:'Cf.also Woodrow Wilson,The State, 1898, Boston, rev. ed., 1911, pp. 560, 561.
[56-3]Ency. Brit., vol. ix. p. 491.
[57-1]Ency. Brit., vol. xxiii. p. 109.
[57-2]Ibid., vol. xxiii. pp. 109-110.
[57-3]Ibid., vol. xxiii. p. 110.
[57-4]Ibid., vol. xxiii. p. 109: "In 1651 Isaac Penington the younger published a pamphlet entitled 'The fundamental right, safety and liberty of the People; which is radically in themselves, derivatively in the Parliament, their substitutes or representatives.'" Cf.New English Dictionary, Oxford, 1891, "Representative," where 1658 is mentioned as its first use.
[57-5]Ency. Brit., vol. xx. p. 835, and vol. ix. p. 491.
[57-6] The House of Lords contains a certain representative element in the Irish and Scottish members. These are some only of the peers of their respective countries, and are elected by their fellow peers to seats in the House of Lords—those from Ireland for life, and from Scotland for a session.
[58-1]Ency. Brit., vol. xii. p. 295.
[58-2]Ibid., p. 295.
[58-3]Ibid., vol. xxiii. p. 112.
[58-4]Ibid., vol. xxiii. p. 112.
[59-1] Alfred Caldecott,English Colonization and Empire, London, 1891, p. 129.
[59-2] Cf.ante, p. 56.
[60-1] Cf.post, p. 109, note 1.
[60-2] The variety of uses of the word "constitution" is referred to,post, pp. 95-108.
[60-3]Cf.W.H. Taft,Popular Government, New Haven, Connecticut, 1913, pp. 42-95, for a discussion of these three terms.
[61-1] C.A.W. Pownall,Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, pp. 207-208.
[62-1] Recourse to the grave process of impeachment lies outside normal procedure and is here disregarded.
[62-2] Cf.post, p. 113et seq.
[63-1]Ency. Brit., vol. xvii. pp. 315, 317; but also cf.ibid., vol. ix. p. 488: "It was the first of the many occasions in English history when the demand for reform took the shape of a reference back to old precedents, and now (as on all subsequent occasions) the party which opposed the crown read back into the ancient grants which they quoted a good deal more than had been actually conceded in them."
[65-1] W.H. Taft,Popular Government, New Haven, Connecticut, 1913, p. 155.
[65-2] The exception to this statement is apparent in the British Isles, where suffrage is a national affair, and no federal framework affords a basis for local option on this privilege.
[66-1]Springfield(Massachusetts)Weekly Republican, November 20, 1913.
[67-1] W. B. Worsfold,The Union of South Africa, London, 1912, p. 126.
[67-2]Ibid., pp. 139-140.
[67-3]An Analysis of the System of Government throughout the British Empire, London, 1912, p. 44.
[68-1]An Analysis of the System of Government throughout the British Empire, London, 1912, pp. 44-45.
[68-2] Edward Jenks,The Future of British Law: An Inaugural Lecture delivered before the University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 1889, pp. 6-7.
[69-1] W.B. Worsfold,The Union of South Africa, London, 1912, p.438.
[70-1] A. V. Dicey, "A Common Citizenship for the English Race," inContemporary Review, vol. lxxi., April 1897, p. 469.
[70-2] Edward Jenks,The Future of British Law: An Inaugural Lecture delivered before the University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 1889, p. 11.
[72-1] Eversley and Craies,Marriage Laws of the British Empire, London, 1910, pp. 61, 173, 192, 70, 239-392.
[73-1] John Stuart Mill,The Subjection of Women, London, 1906, p. 123.
[74-1]United Empire, London, January 1914, A. W. Tilby, "Christianity and the Empire," p. 57.
[75-1]Ency. Brit., vol. xxvii. p. 638.
[75-2] U.S. Bureau of the Census,Special Reports of the Census: Religious Bodies: 1906, Washington, D.C., 1910, pt. ii., pp. 225, 508, 626, 635, 659.
[76-1]New England's First Fruits, London, 1643, p.12.
[77-1]Ency. Brit., vol. viii. p. 971.
[77-2]Whitaker's Almanack, London, 1913, p. 489.
[77-3] Woodrow Wilson,The State, 1898, Boston, rev. ed., 1911, p.18.
{79}
"THE representatives of the great nations across the seas."
A British Colonial Secretary used these words[79-1] in a speech welcoming to the Imperial Conference of 1902 the Prime Ministers of the other Britannic governments. This should be enough to permit the terminology to any Pan-Angle, when he refers to New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Newfoundland or Canada, and the men who govern them. These "great nations across the seas" are themselves conscious of nationhood on a parity with that of the British Isles. A representative of one of them in the same year thus spoke of his country and its fellow nations: "The British Empire . . . a galaxy of independent nations . . . There is not in Canada at the present moment a single British soldier to maintain British supremacy—moreover it is Canadian soldiers who are today garrisoning Halifax . . . The whole Australian continent {80} has now been moulded into another nation under the flag . . . and I can see dawning in South Africa the day when there will be another Confederation . . . "[80-1] Eleven years later in that South Africa another national Prime Minister spoke ofhiscountry andhiscountrymen. "Their country was part of the British Empire. They could not get away from it; it was their Constitution; and yet they were as free as if they were their own State, and they took up the position—he had said so in England—that they were not a subject State, but part of the British Empire, and were on an equality. They were a sister State of England."[80-2]
When throughout these lands writers similarly use the word "nation," the student of Pan-Angle affairs need proceed to no further investigation, though he may be unable to justify the word by current dictionary definition. Enough if he notes its political significance. In the same class are such words as "independent," "self-governing," and "autonomous": subject to the same theoretical queries but established by the same practical usage. Anyone who would question such usage is silenced by the recognition that it only conforms to facts. On such facts is based the thesis of these pages.
The seven units of the Pan-Angle world differ {81} both in size and density of population,[81-1] Hence it might be objected that to classify according to these divisions is to neglect the relative strength and importance of the various political groups, Newfoundland is not as important in population or wealth as the British Isles; while near Canada, it cannot be considered a part of Canada, New Zealand is two-thirds as far from Australia as Newfoundland is from Scotland, and emphatically is no part of its huge neighbour,[81-2] One of its citizens writes: "Although one thousand miles distant from Australia at the nearest point, although situated in a different climate and inevitably destined to display a different national temperament, although already possessed of a national {82} character, national aspirations and national peculiarities, although already served by Imperial affiliation much better than it could be served by any mere local federation, the Australian Prime Minister has no deeper insight than to predict the sinking of New Zealand into thestatusof a petty and subordinate Australian State. . . . before New Zealand denies its independence under the Empire, and seeks shelter under the mantle of the [Australian] Federal Parliament, there will be a new political heaven and a new political earth. At the present time the proposal is simply absurd." [82-1]
Some might prefer to treat the Pan-Angle world as made up of two groups, those under the British and American flags respectively. This, however, fails to give the true character of the five younger Britannic nations, and might suggest erroneously that they bear a position to the British Parliament similar to the position of the American states to the Congress of the United States. Some American may resent the implied insignificance of the forty-eight states, some of which are larger in size or population, or both, than certain of the Britannic nations. Texas is over twice as large as either the British Isles or New Zealand, and has a population about four times that of New Zealand, or somewhat less than that of Australia. Similarly, it may occur to an Australian, or a Canadian, or a South African, that the states of the first, or the provinces of the two latter nations should receive more prominence. Others again might consider that the yet undivided areas of the British Isles, which may some time be {83} organized under a federal system, or else the ancient historical parts as they were before the days of union, should be among the basic units of this discussion.
To all these questionings the same answer applies. It is not easy to generalize in a system which, like ours, is the result of growth and adaptation. There are many local peculiarities of governments and grades of autonomy which, significant in themselves, are immaterial to the question of Pan-Angle federation, and which for simplicity's sake are here ignored. The classification here used does not forbid others. Each reader may consider these people according to any scheme of which he approves. The seven nations here designated are entities. Their pride of personality is in most cases very great. This is reason enough, in spite of huge discrepancies in size and population, for utilizing a classification based on existing national feelings.
The British Isles[83-1] and the United States[83-2] are {84} entirely independent of each other and of all other powers. Neither recognizes the right of anyone to dictate to it in any matter, except by war or its threat. The other five of the Pan-Angle nations do not yet perhaps go so far.
In the past certainly the British government legislated for them as it saw fit. The abolition of slavery under the British flag early in the nineteenth century serves as an example. This outside interference while humane was even then considered arbitrary.
In South Africa "what mainly angered the Cape colonists was the inadequacy of the compensation which was awarded in their case. The value of the slaves on Dec. 1, 1834, when the Emancipation Act came into effect, was estimated by the commissioners specially appointed for the purpose at three million sterling. The sum allotted by the Imperial Government was no more than one and a quarter million, payable, not in South Africa, but in London, and with a deduction of any expenses incurred in carrying out the work of emancipation. The result was to impoverish the former slave owners, and to awaken in them a bitter feeling of resentment against the government which had deprived them of their property, and against the philanthropists by whom the policy of emancipation had been inspired."[84-1] This step had been taken without the consent of the governed, {85} the slave-holding communities having no representation in the Parliament that enacted the law.
Theoretically the same right exists to-day.[85-1] "In granting self-government to the British Dominions Britain did not change her constitution. Conscious that the British Government could not rule great communities in America, Australasia, and Africa, . . . Britain has agreed that they shall manage their own affairs. But she has never undertaken, and could not undertake, a clear division of functions, nor could she in theory explicitly divest herself of final responsibility in any sphere of government. The British North America Act is a constitution by which the relations of the Federal Government of Canada with the Provincial Governments are fully regulated and defined; but it is not a constitution by which the relations of that Federal Government with the Imperial Government are fully regulated or defined. . . . Any constitutional powers vested in the English Government before the grant of self-government to the Dominions are in theory still vested in that Government today."[85-2]
In practice this theoretical right has yielded to the stronger claim of self-government. "My vindication of the preference policy was given not at Ottawa or on Canadian soil, but in the heart of the Empire at London, at the Colonial Conference, when I declared to the Empire that {86} I and my colleagues of the Government were ready to make a trade treaty. We said, 'we are ready to discuss with you articles on which we can give you a preference, and articles on which you can give us a preference. We are ready to make with you a treaty of trade.' Mark those words coming from a colony to the mother country without offence being given or taken."[86-1] "What has never been questioned since the War of Independence is that a democracy pretending to a sovereignty over other democracies is either a phantom or the most intolerable of all oppressions."[86-2] "Nobody dreams in these days of the British Parliament making laws for Canada or Australia. Such an idea is alien to all thinking men, . . . [86-3]
In sum, the government of the British Isles no longer dictates to the "great nations across the seas." All that is now apparent of its former right of interference consists of appeals from the courts of these younger nations to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council of the British Isles, and the seldom used veto power of the governors sent out from the British Isles to these younger nations. The appeal power, though of great theoretical importance, is of such limited practical use that a British writer has overlooked its existence in the following description: The {87} Governor is the only link between the Home Government and the Colonial, and in all of them his powers are limited to the exercise of the veto. Even this is circumscribed. It is tacitly understood that thevetowill be resorted to only when theforeign relationsof the empire are affected, or when some Act is passed which the Secretary of State decides to be incompatible with existent Imperial legislation."[87-1]
In place of the former parental-filial attitude between the British Isles and the five younger nations there is growing up a sympathetic and sentimental friendship. The younger nations as yet have no representatives chosen by their voters to sit in a common legislature with Britishers, but claim, nevertheless, to act with the British Isles as equal partners in the Britannic world. This claim is acknowledged by the British Isles government. In the words of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain at Glasgow, October 6, 1903: "And when I speak ofourcolonies, it is an expression; they are not ours—they are not ours in a possessory sense. They are sister States, able to treat with us from an equal position, able to hold to us, willing to hold to us, but also able to break with us."[87-2]
In the light of the foregoing testimony, the exact political status of New Zealand, Australia, Newfoundland, Canada, and South Africa becomes increasingly difficult to define. It seems, on the whole, more nearly accurate to regard them as {88} independent and autonomous with certain limitations, than to consider them as dependent with excessive liberties. Accordingly, each of the seven Pan-Angle nations is here considered to be the equal of each of the other six.