CHAPTER III
THE HISTORICAL FACTS TRACED WHICH HAVE BEEN GRADUALLY LEADING TO INTERFUSION BETWEEN
THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLE
ARE we the chosen race of Israel? Are we the peoples of the earth, elected to lead the van of civilisation and peace?
Let our competency and integrity of purpose be judged by our present lives, by our civilisation and government, and by our past history. When we discuss the ability, competency, and fitness of an individual for a public or private trust, we begin by examining into his character, his mental and intellectual acquirements, his business capacity; his experience, his past life and conduct. We gauge and weigh every element of his moral and intellectual nature, and our judgment is formed by the results, good or bad, which flow from the examination.
Now, a state or government has a character precisely like an individual. To analyse it, understand and appreciate it, we must search the records of history; we must examine and weigh every important epoch of its national life to determine its fitness, its trustworthiness, and its ability to be charged with the great mission of civilisation and peace. We must sum up its influence upon its own people, as well as consider the effect of its national life and character upon other nations.
Before I proceed, then, to examine into the motives and reasons which operate on the English and American nations to justify a union, it is well to inquire into their national character. In the light of history, how do the Anglo-Saxon people stand? Guided by such, how should the outside world estimate us? Is the compact we are contemplating a false or unholy one? Is it for the present and future interest of the English-speaking people to make it? Will this union militate against the interests of the other nations of the world?
I do not propose to attempt to recall the history of England—not even in the briefest form. I will simply bring to notice certain salient epochs, which I will use as monuments to mark the progress of the Anglo-Saxon race, as it journeyed from its primitive, formative condition to a state of enlightenment. I do not stop to dwell upon intermediate history, or attempt to explain, palliate, or justify acts which of themselves may seem to deviate from the general character of the people. Such acts, indeed, were part of the conditions of their growth. I take my readers to a high vantage-ground, and point out to them the long pilgrimage of the nation from its untutored infancy to the shrine of its full manhood. And I shall hereafter consider the subtle, all-pervading influences which their institutions, laws, language, and literature have had upon the formation of national and individual character.
I.—THE DIFFERENT EPOCHS WHICH LED TO THE DEVELOPMENT AND EXPANSION OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING RACE
(a) The Introduction of Christianity into England
The English race began its outward and more apparent national life as a band of marauders, rovers, and pirates, by chasing, in a large measure, the original Celtic inhabitants of Britain from their soil, and taking possession of it. The exact motives which induced them to make these excursions to that island, or the circumstances which surrounded them, are lost in the darkness of the past. Probably they were prompted by mere rapacity and the gratification of the spirit of enterprise. The tribes which are now distinctly marked, as the Engle, Saxon, and Jute, belonged to the same Low German branch of the Teutonic family, and were, as it is said by the historians, at the moment when history discovers them, being drawn together by the ties of a common blood, common speech, common social and political institutions. There is perhaps no ground for believing that these three tribes looked on themselves as one people, or that they adopted the name of Englishmen when they first settled in England, but each of them was destined to share in the conquest of that island, and it was from the union of all of them, when its conquest was complete, that the English people has sprung.[1]
The real national life of the people, however, commenced in the sixth century, when Gregory (597) sent the Roman abbot Augustine, at the head of a band of monks, to preach the Gospel to them; and, as among the Greeks, the religious tie thus created, became the strongest tie.
The flood of new thoughts and new purposes which Christ had opened to the Eastern world began, by this time, to permeate Europe. The distinctive features of Christ's precepts and life, considering Him as a pure teacher alone, were that He instructed men how to make the best use of their mental, physical, and spiritual faculties. Consequently, as individual character is the real basis of human society, Christianity became a necessary part of government. At first, it was a plant of slow growth in English soil, but the seed, once sown, took firm hold, and to-day, in England, North America, and in the colonies of the British Empire, Christianity, avowedly or essentially, is strongly and healthfully entwined in all its constitutions and governments,—a strong principle of cohesion, yet yielding to the people an unrestrained freedom of religious opinion and worship of the most unqualified character.
Of course, I do not overlook the immense benefits of Christianity common to all the nations among which it was introduced; it made the great distinction between ancient and modern civilization—between ancient and modern life. But, in England, it was so far peculiar, that its ready and peaceful acceptance, and the purposes of political homogeneity to which it was turned, indicate a distinct national characteristic. All the subsequent religious history of the country, even after diversities arose, bears evidence of the same general truth. In the contests through which society sought its amelioration, we can discover always that "intimate connection between personal liberty and the rights of conscience and the development of public liberty so peculiar to the English race."[2]
I take the introduction of Christianity into England to be the first great step in her natural and national progress—the first span in the bridge which led from barbarity to civilisation. Its influence upon the people can be profitably studied in the typical Englishman, King Alfred.[3]
Of Liberty, the poet Shelley sings with equal truth and beauty:
"And then the shadow of thy coming fell On Saxon Alfred's olive-cinctured brow."
We have recently celebrated the millennium of this illustrious ruler. It should be made an occasion for the advancement of the purposes I am here opening. These purposes would have been Alfred's.
(b) The Consolidation of the Different Kingdoms of England into One
Although from the time of the landing of the Jutes, Saxons, and Engles (449), their history is jejune and scanty, and the occurrences of four centuries have been condensed by an accomplished historian[4] into a few pages of history, yet sufficient appears to show that the several governments established by them in England were engaged in many bloody and bitter intestine contests, and that the consolidation of the people was first effected by Egbert (about 827). This union lasted only five years, and we are told that it was brought about, "for the moment, by the sword of Egbert." It was a union of sheer force, which broke down at the first blow of the sea robbers—the Northmen—who, about this time, invaded England. But the very chance which destroyed the new England was destined to bring it back again, and to breathe into it a life which made its union real. "The peoples who had so long looked on each other as enemies found themselves confronted by a common foe. They were thrown together by a common danger, and the need of a common defence. Their common faith grew into a national bond, as religion struggled, hand in hand, with England itself; against the heathen of the North."[5] They recognised a common king, as a common struggle changed Alfred and his sons from mere leaders of West Saxons into leaders of all Englishmen in their fight with the stranger, and when the work which Alfred set his house to do was done; when the yoke of the Northmen was lifted from the last of his conquests, Engle, Saxon, Northumbrian, and Mercian, spent with the battle for a common freedom and a common country, knew themselves, in the hour of their deliverance, as an English people.[6]
The work of Alfred was to save the Saxon name and existence—that he accomplished. His conquest, on the other hand, was never complete. His wars ended in compromise, the Danes retaining large settlements in the North and East of England. Subsequently, their invasions were renewed. In Canute's reign, they were the prevailing people. In all these life-and-death struggles, there is nothing that detracts. The Danes should be considered as a cognate people, alternating with the Saxons, and finally blending with them; quite as often defenders of the soil as invaders, and contributing largely to the formation of the national character. In the struggle against the Norman king, they were the last to succumb.
The union which each several tribe within the nation had in turn failed to bring about was realised from the pressure of the Northmen. It seems that at the close of the eighth century, the drift of the English people towards national unity was utterly arrested. The work of Northumbria had been foiled by the resistance of Mercia; the effort of Mercia had broken down before the resistance of Wessex; and a threefold division had stamped itself upon the land. So completely was the balance of power between the three realms which parted it, that no subjection of one to the other seemed likely to fuse the English tribes into an English people; yet the consolidation of the several kingdoms of England into one was eventually reached.[7]
It was the second step in its national progress.
What brought it about? Mark this well. The instinct of self-preservation, of which the ambition, more or less enlightened, of the several petty kings, was the instrument; the external force in the ravages of the Northmen; the marriages and alliances between the tribes; in fine, all of the same causes which to-day are operating with greater force towards the unification of the English-speaking peoples.
Compare England in this connection with the Grecian cities. The unhappy destiny of the latter was complete before they realised the benefit of consolidation, and when it was at last advocated, and in some small degree adopted, it was too late. We read of the Ætolian League and the Achaian League, but only as studies to the political thinker of an idea to which there was always wanting the power of fulfilment. Where lies the difference? Not in intellect, surely, for no race has ever surpassed the Greek in intellect. In what then? Simply, as I understand, in character—in that especial endowment by which the Anglo-Saxon race so moulds itself, in its civic and social relations, as to attain the highest purposes of political wisdom, moderation, the subordination of self, the rejection of false or impossible ideals, together with a kind of innate perception of the value of time and occasion, in combination with persistency, stability, and courage—these are the qualities which have made its institutions at once models for the rest of the world, and the subjects of its envy. The fatal disease of small political entities ran through all the Grecian states, and they were doomed. Consolidation, with the Greeks, was never more than a faintly formed idea; with the English, like all other political conceptions, it soon became a fact.
(c) The Influence of the Roman Law upon England's Progress
A civilising influence of the highest importance was the absorption of the Roman law into their legal, ecclesiastical, and political systems. It is an epoch in the progress of the English, which, although impossible to say at what precise period its influence was the greatest upon their people, I call the third span in the bridge from an immature to a civilised state.
It is certain that the Romans had establishments in England from the time of Claudius (A.D. 43) until the year A.D. 448. During the greater part of these four centuries they governed it as a Roman province in the enjoyment of peace and the cultivation of arts. The Roman laws were administered as the laws of that country, and at one time under the prefecture of their distinguished ornament, Papinian.[8]
To estimate its influence upon the progress and development of England, one must be prepared to accept the now generally recognised opinion, that the Roman Law permeated every branch of jurisprudence—property, procedure, criminal law—all. It was ubiquitous, and even the feudal system, whose origin was attributed, by most of the common-law writers, to the time of William the Conqueror, is shown to have existed long anterior to that reign; and was, probably, the creation of the Romans.
The jurisprudence of Rome was, and has ever been, an unfailing fountain, whence the English people have drawn copious draughts of wisdom and knowledge.
I do not mean by these observations to detract from the common law—crude as it may have been as a science—for, in all that relates to the principles and protection of civil liberty, it was infinitely in advance of the Roman Law.
As a political system, the Roman Law was framed to be the instrument of the despotism, under which it was perfected. As in everything else, the English Law reflected the political genius of the people. They extracted and preserved the good, and rejected the evils, of the Roman system, the absorption of which exhibits keen power of assimilation.
(d) The Great Charters; The Petition of Right; The Habeas Corpus Act, Passed under Charles, The Bill of Rights in 1688, and The Act of Settlement
The Great Charter of King John contained very few new grants, but, as Sir Edward Coke observes, was mainly declaratory of the fundamental laws of England.
But from his reign (1199) until the end of the reign of William III. (1700), a period of almost exactly five hundred years, the English nation was engaged in enlarging, deepening, and strengthening the forms of a constitutional monarchy. Thus, the Great Charter was confirmed in Parliament by Henry III., the son of John. In the next reign of Edward I., by statute called confirmatio cartarum, the Great Charter was directed to be allowed as the common law. And by a multitude of statutes between the last-named reign and that of Henry IV., its principles were again declared and corroborated. Hume enumerates these statutes as being thirty in all.
Then, after a long interval, and much backward and forward movement, thrillingly interesting to the student, came the parliamentary declaration of the liberties of the people, assented to by Charles I., in the beginning of his reign, and celebrated as the Petition of Right. Subsequently, the Habeas Corpus Act was passed in the reign of Charles II. To the above succeeded the Bill of Rights, delivered by the Lords and Commons to the Prince and Princess of Orange in 1688. Lastly, the liberties of the people were again asserted at the commencement of the eighteenth century in the Act of Settlement, whereby some new provisions were added for the better securing of religion, laws, and liberties, which the Statute declares to be "the birthright of the people of England," according to the ancient doctrine of the common law.[9]
I take this great struggle for laws and liberty as marking another distinct and remarkable epoch in the history of England—the fourth span in the bridge of her growth and development.
I am travelling rapidly through the ages of English history; but not going so fast as not to be able to see that the nation and her people are constantly progressing.
(e) The Union with Scotland
The fifth great epoch in the History of England, is the union with Scotland; by which the Kingdoms of England and Scotland, on the 1st day of May, 1707, became united as one under the name of Great Britain. The Act which created this union did not constitute between the two nations a federal alliance, but an "incorporated union," the effect of which was that the two contracting states, in their dual condition relatively to each other were totally annihilated, and they became, thereafter, one political entity, without any power of revival.
It is not essential to trace the history, anterior and subsequent, which bears upon this great event; yet we may profitably reflect, that, arising out of centuries of hostility and mutual injury, here also were the most inveterate prejudices to be overcome, upon the one hand; on the other, partial similarity of race, language, and institutions, and, in the view of statesmen, the most enormous advantages. Under wise and skilful management, the latter were at last made to prevail. It is, however, notorious, such was the perverse opposition, particularly in Scotland, the nation most to be benefited, that notwithstanding the preparation for the event by a long train of antecedent causes, had the measure been referred to a plebiscitum, it could not have been carried. Can we now do other than smile at such wilful blindness, such well-intentioned folly? It is a most interesting page in history, and in the present connection it carries with it the force of an authority.
(f) Discovery of America
I now turn to another epoch closely connected with the progress of the English-American people.
In the fifteen centuries which followed the birth of Christ, many important and profoundly serious historical events are chronicled, but the sublimest fact of them all, after the introduction of Christianity, is the discovery of America. The intelligence, ambition, courage, influence, and progress of the English race are nowhere more strongly illustrated than in the events which follow this portentous event: it constitutes the sixth great epoch in the history of the English-speaking people. Originally controlled by the Spanish and French, this great North American Continent, little by little, but by sure and regular steps, at length came completely under the domination of the Anglo-Saxon race. I do not dwell upon this epoch as a mere spectacle of military and material conquest. I point to the great results which have flowed from it. Every acre of ground they acquired, either by conquest or purchase, they have retained, planting in its soil deep and indestructibly the seeds of their policy, religion, and government. No revolution, no time, no partial infusion of other races, has been able to eradicate the English-American principles from the ground in which they were originally sown.
There is a marked and impressive similarity between the conquest of Britain by the Engles, Saxons, and Jutes, subsequently consolidated into England, and the conquest or absorption of the North American Continent by the English-American people. The original Britons, as such, have almost entirely disappeared. And where are the aborigines of North America? A few bands of Indians constitute the vestige of the race which peopled the North American continent when the hand and power of the Anglo-Saxon people were laid upon it. Pause and reflect upon this conquest: how it was accomplished; the principles which justified the invasion of the country, and the acquisition of the territory of the Indians. It was not merely greed and conquest that actuated the settlers. Granted that they were not always above the ordinary motives which actuate humanity, still in the main, it was the spirit of discovery, the inextinguishable thirst for enterprise, so marked a characteristic of the race, which impelled them. And, as we so well know, these qualities were often combined with the noblest motives;—the desire of finding absolute freedom for their religious opinions and worship, which the necessities of the political situation at home denied them. Go back to the aim and purpose of government for a justification of these acts, preliminary to the introduction of order and civic government in the midst of a savage and barbarous country. Behold the introduction of English principles, laws, literature, into the great North American continent. While with heartfelt sympathy we deplore the sufferings and extinction of the earlier possessors of the soil, do we not clearly see that it affords a conspicuous instance of that Providence which shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will?
(g) The Independence of the Colonies
The seventh great epoch in the progress of the English-speaking people, conceiving them as a whole in their growth and expansion, is the separation of the colonies from the mother country and the establishment of the Republic of the United States. It constitutes one of the most important links in the chain of circumstances which makes up the history of this people. It is perhaps the greatest expansion of a kindred race that history has ever recorded. It has been accompanied by such a fecundity of population; such marvellous personal and aggregate wealth; such phenomenal development of individual and national prosperity; such wonders of science, art, mechanical invention, and commercial greatness; such enormous discoveries of mineral treasures; such superabundance of agricultural resources, as to amaze the very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet it is said by some persons, because of the revolution of 1776, that this phenomenal offspring of England, whose similarity of speech, laws, literature, customs, complexion, manners, in fine, of everything vital, is so striking, should shrink from a closer union with her maternal ancestor; that overtures to push farther their onward march towards civilisation and peace should be treated either with indifference or positive scorn and contempt! And this revolution of 1776, which was in reality but a further expansion and propagation of the English race, and the principles of English liberty, laws, and government, we Americans are advised by a certain class to look upon as a barrier to closer ties between kindred people! This argument is so unnatural, so unchristianlike, so contrary to the laws of human affection; so opposed to our mutual interest and progress; so antagonistic to the good of mankind; so utterly unfounded in reason and history, that I doubt whether it does not fall by its own inherent weakness.
The Revolutionary War, in its outward form, commenced as a struggle for the right of representation, and was afterwards extended to a demand for absolute liberty and independence. But, inherently, it really was the struggle of natural laws in aid of future growth. Although the immediate contest grew out of what was, in effect, an infraction of political rights and liberties, beyond all this were these natural causes operating to produce separation. The peculiar situation of the colonies, the immensity of their possessions, their remoteness from the mother country, the enormous difficulties of intercommunication, produced such isolation in space, notwithstanding much love of the "old home" and pride of ancestry, that an eventual parting between the two countries was simply inevitable.
The War of 1776 was a family quarrel, and bitter, as all family quarrels are. It had been brewing for at least ten years before open war was resorted to, and the history of those ten years, when closely studied, shows that natural conditions were accelerating and encouraging the formal demands which the colonies were to make of the mother country. There is no reason to believe that if the demands had been adjusted, the union of the countries would have been long preserved.
The truth is, that the son had arrived at full, mature age. The maternal mansion was too small for his energy and ambition, and could not accommodate his growing demands and wants. He threw off his allegiance to the mother country, and set up for himself in a separate establishment. It is doubtless true that the maternal rule, by being, in some particulars, narrow, rigid, and unjust, accelerated the eventual demand for that broader national life which was opening in the domains of the new world, and I do not mean to deny that the arguments used by the colonists to justify their separation were not sound. Weaker reasons than those advanced, however, would, as circumstances were, have amply justified the steps they took to establish their independence. The inherent necessities were present, and reasons were easily found to warrant extreme measures. On this side of the Atlantic, in our historical treatment of the subject, we have confined ourselves in the main to the immediate causes and events of the unhappy quarrel, and it is a singular evidence of the candour and conciliatory spirit of the English, that their writers have, in most instances, accepted our version of them, and even enhanced upon them; nay, have even glorified in them as affording another example of the keen-sighted love of liberty inherent in the race.[10] Nothing is more complete than the national self-abnegation (if the expression may be allowed) with which the subject is treated by English authors. Might not we Americans at this time of day, in a spirit of equal fairness, find some apology for our then antagonist? As thus: that the struggle was conceived and precipitated by a handful of infatuated politicians and a narrow-minded King; that the pretext turned upon a point of pure legality, such as has always been found to have a tyrannous influence over minds so constituted—a point, however, to which none of our warmest defenders were able to find a legal answer; that at every stage of the question it was contested by an opposition in Parliament composed of men of exalted talent and purity of purpose, whose speeches and writings on the subject are among the most precious gifts of political eloquence and wisdom, and who were willing to sacrifice their own political existence in proof of the sincerity of their advocacy of our cause; that a similar powerful opposition existed in the country, where the name of Pitt was still a charm to conjure by; that if we had been content to wait for a brief time, that opposition must have come into power, and, as in the case of similar reactionary movements in England herself, the broader doctrine must then have prevailed, and every vestige of tyranny, and every cause of disagreement, been swept away. We might ask ourselves whether, being human, we were altogether impeccable! England under the government of Chatham had valiantly come to our aid, and, after a vast expenditure of blood and treasure, secured this continent for her sons; and the subject of the partial reimbursement, in behalf of which she taxed us, was the staggering debt incurred in our defence. There was a measure of truth in this, and narrow and inexpedient as was the attempt at coercion, in the eyes of statesmen, it was just one of those errors into which ordinary mortals are most apt to fall. The quarrel once begun had, of course, the usual tendency to aggravate itself by intemperate speech and action. As to antecedent conditions, let comparison be made between English, and French, and Spanish methods of colonial government. In them Mr. Burke, our most ardent and enlightened advocate, could find nothing to condemn. He commends the wisdom of the general system and "the wise neglect" of previous administrations. No one who has read the speech on "Conciliation," can ever forget the magnificent tribute to the rising greatness of the colonies, and to that "Liberty" which we possessed, and which made that greatness. Even the Navigation Laws, ugly blemish as they were, were strictly in accordance with the economic ideas of the time, and as such were introduced and accepted. Compare them, again, in their practical operation, with those of France and Spain. Mr. Burke deplores them, but "as our one customer was a very rich man" he remarks that, until a very recent period, they had been scarcely felt as a disadvantage. That seems really to have been so. Franklin, in that inimitable examination before the Committee of the House of Commons, admits as much, and says further, that, in his opinion, those laws would not of themselves justify the resistance of the colonies. Upon the whole subject, in a conversation with Burke, Franklin confessed his fear that the condition of the colonies, in the new order of things, would be less happy and prosperous than in the old. It was about this time that the doctrines of Adam Smith were beginning to take root, and it is certain that in less than half a generation the whole restrictive system, as applied to the colonies, would, notwithstanding the selfish opposition of the mercantile classes, have vanished like a dream. As to the kinds of government bestowed on the colonies, they were mostly of their own choosing, and in advance of the times. Mr. Lecky remarks of them that "it cannot with justice be said that they were not good in themselves, and upon the whole, not well administered." Locke, the friend of all liberal government, gave his genius and virtue to the elaboration of one of them. Penn's model of government was in advance of his times and in the forefront of ours, and it is believed that the Calverts sought to embody the ideal perfections of Sir Thomas Moore's Utopia in the Constitution of Maryland.
The truth is, that but for the natural causes impelling to separation, the whole contention might, and should, have been treated as a domestic one, in which, by virtue of the underlying principles of the British Constitution, all that was wisest and best would have triumphed, and there would have arisen out of it, for both countries, an edifice stronger and more beautiful than any which had gone before it. It was not to be. What remains to us now is the fervent wish that all that was evil in the controversy may for ever perish from the memories of men, and in aid of that wish, the consideration that, as we were the victors, to the victors belongs magnanimity, especially when the victory was over our own kith and kin.
And in this temper of mind we may reflect that the War of the Revolution was to us, in certain vital aspects, unmistakably a blessing—it brought Union and the Constitution. Every student of our history knows how deeply seated were the diversities between the States, and what slight causes might have inflamed them into enduring antagonisms; how embarrassing such conditions were to Washington and the statesmen of the period; how, as a consequence, through what opposing forces the ideas afterwards ripening into the Constitution made their way. The Union and the Constitution, as we have them today, were, then, the direct products of that struggle. Without its impelling influence, it is more than doubtful whether they would have been realised at all. I can recall no instance in history where such peculiar results have been reached, and permanently maintained, where opposing passions existed and have been left to