[Sidenote: British Dominion in India, 1757. Battle of Quebec, 1760.]
Two years later a quarrel over the boundaries of their American colonies brought the French and English into direct conflict. Gen. Wolfe, the English Commander, was killed at the moment of victory in scaling the walls of Quebec. Montcalm, the French commander, being saved the humiliation of seeing the loss of Canada (1760), by sharing the same fate.
The dream of French Empire in America was at an end; and with the cession of Florida by Spain, England was mistress of the eastern half of the Continent from Nova Scotia to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. So since the days of Elizabeth, and from seed dropped by her hand, an Eastern and a Western Empire had been added to that island Kingdom, whose highest dream had been to get back some of her lost provinces in France. Instead of that it was to be her destiny to girdle the Earth, so that the Sun in its entire course should never cease to shine upon British Dominions.
[Sidenote: John Wesley.]
Side by side with the aspiration which uplifts a nation, there is always a tendency toward degradation, which can only be arrested by the infusion of a higher spiritual life. Strong alcoholic liquors had taken the place of beer in England (to avoid the excessive tax imposed upon it) and the grossest intemperance prevailed in the early part of this reign. John Wesley introduced a regenerative force when he went about among the people preaching "Methodism," a pure and simple religion. Not since Augustine had the hearts of men been so touched, and a new life and new spirit came into being, better than all the prosperity and territorial expansion of the time.
Walpole had passed from view long before the stirring changes we have alluded to. A new hand was guiding the affairs of State; the hand of William Pitt.
CHAPTER XII.
At the close of the Seven Years' War, England had driven the French out of Canada,—her ships which had traversed the Pacific from one end to the other, (Capt. Cook) had wherever they touched, claimed islands for the Crown; she had projected into the heart of India English institutions and civilization.
Mistress of North America, and of the Pacific Isles, and future mistress of India, she had left in comparative insignificance those European States whose power was bounded by a single Continent. And all this,—in the reign of the puniest King who had ever sat upon her throne! As if to show that England was great not through—but in spite of, her Kings.
[Sidenote: George III. 1760-1820.]
When in 1760, George III. came to the throne, thirteen prosperous American Colonies were a source of handsome revenue to the mother country, by whom they were regarded as receptacles for surplus population, and a good field for unsuccessful men and adventurers. These children were frequently reminded that they owed England a great debt of gratitude. They had cost her expensive Indian and French wars for which she should expect them to reimburse her as their prosperity grew. They were to make nothing themselves, not so much as a horseshoe; but to send their raw material to English mills and factories, and when it was returned to them in wares and manufactured articles, they were to pay such taxes as were imposed, with grateful hearts to the kind Government which was so good as to rule them.
[Sidenote: Stamp Act, 1765.]
If the Colonies had still needed the protection of England from the French, they might never have questioned the propriety of their treatment. They were at heart intensely loyal, and the thought of severance from the Mother Country probably did not exist in a single breast. But they had since the fall of Quebec a feeling of security which was a good background for independence, if their manhood required its assertion. They were Anglo-Saxons, and perfectly understood the long struggle for civil rights which lay behind them. So when in 1765 they were told that they must bear their share of the burden of National Debt which had been increased by wars in their behalf, and to that end a "Stamp Act" had been passed, they very carefully looked into the demand. This Act required that every legal document drawn in the Colonies, will, deed, note, draft, receipt, etc., be written upon paper bearing an expensive Government stamp.
The thirteen Colonies, utterly at variance upon most subjects, were upon this agreed: They would not submit to the tax. They had read the Magna Charta, they knew that the Stamp Act violated its most vital principle. This tax had been framed to extort money from men who had no representation in Parliament, hence without their consent.
Pitt vehemently declared that the Act was a tyranny, Burke and Fox protested against it, the brain and the heart of England compelled the repeal of the Act; Pitt declaring that the spirit shown in America was the same that in England had withstood the Stuarts, and refused "Ship Money." There was rejoicing and ringing of bells over the repeal, but before the echoes had died away another plan was forming in the narrow recesses of the King's brain.
George III. had read English History. He remembered that if Parliaments grow obstructive, the way is not to fight them but to pack them with the right kind of material. Tampering with the boroughs, had so filled the House of Commons with Tories that it had almost ceased to be a representative body, and if Pitt would not bow to his wishes, he would find a Minister who would. Another tax was devised.
[Sidenote: Tax on Tea.]
Threepence a pound upon tea, shipped direct to America from India, would save the impost to England, bring tea at a cheaper rate to the Colonies (even with the added tax), and at the same time yield a handsome revenue to the Government.
The Colonists were not at all moved by the idea of getting cheaper tea. They had taken their stand in this matter of taxation without representation; they would never move from it one inch. When the cargo of tea arrived in Boston harbor, it was thrown overboard by men disguised as Indians.
George III. in a rage closed the port of Boston, cancelled the Charter of Massachusetts, withdrew the right of electing its own council and judges, investing the Governor with these rights, to whom he also gave the power to send rebellious and seditious prisoners to England for trial. Then to make all this sure of fulfilment, he sent troops to enforce the order, in command of General Gage, whom he also appointed Governor of Massachusetts.
Fox said, "How intolerable that it should be in the power of one blockhead to do so much mischief!" The obstinacy of George III. cost England her dearest and fairest possession. It is almost impossible to picture what would be her power to-day if she had continued to be mistress of North America!
All unconscious of his stupendous folly, the King was delighted at his own firmness. He rubbed his hands in high glee as he said,—"The die is cast, the Colonies must submit or triumph," meaning of course that "triumph" was a thing impossible. Pitt (now Earl Chatham), Burke, Fox, even the Tory House of Lords, petitioned and implored in vain. The confident, stubborn King stood alone, and upon him lies the whole responsibility—Lord North simply acting as his compliant tool.
The colonies united as one, all local differences forgotten. As they fought at Lexington and at Bunker Hill, the idea of something more than resistance was born—the idea of independence.
A letter from the Government addressed to the Commander-in-Chief as "George Washington, Esq.," was sent back unopened. Battles were lost and won, the courage and resources of the Americans holding out for years as if by miracle, until when reinforced by France the end drew near; and was reached with the defeat of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown.
[Sidenote: Independence Acknowledged, 1782.]
It was a dreary morning in 1782 when a humiliated King stood before the House of Lords and acknowledged the independence of the United States of America!
Thus ended a contest which the Earl of Chatham had said "was conceived in injustice, and nurtured in folly."
It was during the American war that the Press rose to be a great counterbalancing power. Popular sentiment no longer finding an outlet in the House of Commons, sought another mode of expression. Public opinion gathered in by the newspapers became a force before which Government dared not stand. The "Chronicle," "Post," "Herald" and "Times" came into existence, philosophers like Coleridge, and statesmen like Canning using their columns and compelling reforms.
[Sidenote: Impeachment of Warren Hastings, 1788.]
The impeachment of Warren Hastings, conducted by Burke, Sheridan, and
Fox, led to such an exposure of the cruelty and corruption of the East
India Company, that the gigantic monopoly was broken up. A "Board of
Control" was created for the administration of Indian affairs, thus
absorbing it into the general system of English Government (1784).
James Watt had introduced (in 1769) steam into the life of England, with consequences dire at first, and fraught with such tremendous results later, changing all the industrial conditions of England and of the world.
In 1789 England witnessed that terrific outburst of human passions in France, which culminated in the death of a King and a Queen. An appalling sight which made Republicanism seem odious, even to so exalted and just a soul as Burke, who denounced it with words of thrilling eloquence. Then came Napoleon Bonaparte, and his swift ascent to imperial power, followed by his audacious conquest almost of Europe, until Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, led the allied army at Waterloo, and Napoleon's sun went down.
In 1812 the United States for a second time declared war against England. That country had claimed the right to search for British-born seamen upon American ships, in order to impress them into her own service and recruit her Navy. The "right of search" was denied, and the British forces landed in Maryland, burned the Capitol and Congressional Library at Washington, but met their "Waterloo" at New Orleans, where, under General Andrew Jackson, they were defeated, and the "right of search" is heard of no more.
Long before this time George III. had been a prey to blindness, deafness, and insanity, and in 1820 his death came as a welcome event. Had he not been blind, deaf, and insane, in 1775, England might not have lost her fairest possession.
The weight of the enormous debt incurred by the long wars fell most heavily upon the poor. One-half of their earnings went to the Crown. The poor man lived under a taxed roof, wore taxed clothing, ate taxed food from taxed dishes, and looked at the light of day through taxed window-glass. Nothing was free but the ocean.
But there must not be cheap bread, for that meant reduced rents. The farmer was "protected" by having the price of corn kept artificially above a certain point, and further "protected" by a prohibitory tax upon foreign corn, all in order that the landlord might collect undiminished rentals from his farm lands. But, alas! there was no "protection" from starvation. Is it strange that gaunt famine was a frequent visitor in the land?—But men must starve in silence.—To beg was crime.
"Alas, that bread should be so dear,
And flesh and blood so cheap!"
Children six years old worked fourteen and fifteen hours daily in mines and factories, beaten by overseers to keep them awake over their tasks; while others five and six years old, driven by blows, crawled with their brooms into narrow soot-clogged chimneys, and sometimes getting wedged in narrow flues, were mercifully suffocated and translated to a kinder world.
A ruinous craving was created for stimulants, which took the place of insufficient food, and in these stunted, pallid, emaciated beings a foundation was laid for an enfeebled and debased population, which would sorely tax the wisdom of statesmanship in the future.
If such was the condition of the honest working poor, what was that of the criminal? It is difficult now to comprehend the ferocity of laws which made 235 offenses—punishable with death,—most of which we should now call misdemeanors. But perhaps death was better than the prisons, which were the abode of vermin, disease and filth unspeakable. Jailers asked for no pay, but depended upon the money they could wring from the wretched beings in their charge for food and small alleviations to their misery. In 1773 John Howard commenced his work in the prisons, and the idea was first conceived that the object of punishment should be not to degrade sin-sick humanity, but to reform it.
Far above this deep dark undercurrent, there was a bright, shining surface. Johnson had made his ponderous contribution to letters. Francis Barney had surprised the world with "Evelina;" Horace Walpole, (son of Sir Robert) was dropping witty epigrams from his pen; Sheridan, Goldsmith, Cowper, Burns, Southey, Coleridge, Wordsworth, in tones both grave and gay, were making sweet music; while Scott, Byron, Shelley added strains rich and melodious.
[Sidenote: First English Railway, 1830.]
As all this was passing, George Stephenson was pondering over a daring project. Fulton had completed his invention in 1807, and in 1819 the first steamship had crossed the Atlantic. If engines could be made to plough through the water, why might they not also be made to walk the earth? It was thought an audacious experiment when he put this iron fire-devouring monster on wheels, to draw loaded cars. Not until 1830 was his plan realized, when his new locomotive—"The Rocket"—drew the first railway train from Liverpool to Manchester, the Duke of Wellington venturing his life on the trial trip.
In the year 1782 Ireland was permitted to have its own Parliament; but owing to a treasonable correspondence with France, a few years later, she was deprived of this legislative independence, and in 1801, after a prolonged struggle, was reunited to Great Britain, and thenceforth sent her representatives to the British Parliament.
[Sidenote: Oppression of Roman Catholics. Daniel O'Connell.]
The laws against Roman Catholics which had been enacted as measures of self-defence from the Stuarts, now that there was no longer a necessity for them had become an oppression, which bore with special weight upon Catholic Ireland. By the oath of "Supremacy," and by the declarations against transubstantiation, intercession of Saints, etc., etc., the Catholics were shut out from all share in a Government which they were taxed to support. Such an obvious injustice should not have needed a powerful pleader; but it found one in Daniel O'Connell, who by constant agitation and fiery eloquence created such a public sentiment, that the Ministry, headed by the Duke of Wellington, aided by Sir Robert Peel in the House, carried through a measure in 1828 which opened Parliament to Catholics, and also gave them free access to all places of trust, Civil or Military,—excepting that of Regent,—Lord Chancellor—and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
[Sidenote: George IV., 1820-1830.]
There is nothing to record of George IV. except the irregularities of his private life, over which we need not linger. He was a dissolute spendthrift. His illegal marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert, and his legal marriage with Caroline of Brunswick from whom he quickly freed himself, are the chief events in his history.
His charming young daughter, the Princess Charlotte, had died in 1817, soon after her marriage with Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. She had been adored as the future Queen, but upon the death of George IV. in 1830, the Crown passed to his sailor brother William.
[Sidenote: William IV., 1830-1837.]
William IV. was sixty-five when he came to the throne. He was not a courtier in his manners, nor much of a fine gentleman in his tastes. But his plain, rough sincerity was not unacceptable, and his immediate espousal of the Reform Act, then pending, won him popularity at once.
The efficiency and integrity of the House of Commons had long been impaired by an effete system of representation, which had been unchanged for 500 years. Boroughs were represented which had long disappeared from the face of the earth. One had for years been covered by the sea! Another existed as a fragment of a wall in a gentleman's park, while towns like Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, and nineteen other large and prosperous places, had no representation whatever. These "rotten boroughs" as they were called, were usually in the hands of wealthy landowners; one great Peer literally carrying eleven boroughs in his pocket, so that eleven members went to the House of Commons at his dictation.—It would seem that a reform so obviously needed should have been easy to accomplish. But the House of Lords clung to the old system as if the life of the Kingdom depended upon it. And when the measure was finally carried the good old Duke of Wellington said sadly, "We must hope for the best; but the most sanguine cannot believe we shall ever again be as prosperous."
By this Act 56 boroughs were disfranchised, and 43 new ones, with 30 county constituencies, were created.
[Sidenote: "Reform Bill, 1832"]
It was in the contest over this Reform Bill that the Tories took the name of "Conservatives" and their opponents "Liberals." Its passage marks a most important transition in England. The workingman was by it enfranchised, and the House of Commons, which had hitherto represented property, thenceforth represented manhood.
Nor were political reforms the only ones. Human pity awoke from its lethargy. The penalties for wrongdoing became less brutal, the prisons less terrible. No longer did gaping crowds watch shivering wretches brought out of the jails every Monday morning, in batches of twenty and thirty, to be hung for pilfering or something even less. Little children were lifted out of the mines and factories and chimneys and placed in schools, which also began to be created for the poor. Numberless ways were devised for making life less miserable for the unfortunate, and for improving the social conditions of toiling men and women.
[Sidenote: Slaves Emancipated, 1833.]
While white slavery in the collieries and factories was thus mitigated, Wilberforce removed the stain of negro slavery from England in securing the passage of a Bill which, while compensating the owners (who received 20,000,000 pounds), set 800,000 human beings free (1833).
CHAPTER XIII.
[Sidenote: Accession of Victoria, 1837.]
William IV. died at Windsor Castle, and at 5 o'clock on the morning of June 2oth, 1837 (just 58 years from the day this is written), a young girl of eighteen was awakened to be told she was Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. Victoria was the only child of Edward, Duke of Kent, brother of William IV. Her marriage in 1840 with her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg, was one of deep affection, and secured for her a wise and prudent counsellor.
[Sidenote: Famine in Ireland, 1846.]
On account of the high price of corn, Ireland had for years subsisted entirely upon potatoes. The failure of this crop for several successive seasons, in 1846 produced a famine of such appalling dimensions that the old and the new world came to the rescue of the starving people. Parliament voted 10,000,000 pounds for food. But before relief could reach them, two millions, one-fourth of the population of Ireland, had perished. The anti-corn measures, championed by Richard Cobden and John Bright, which had been bitterly opposed by the Tories under the leadership of Disraeli, were thus reinforced by unexpected argument; foreign breadstuffs were permitted free access and free trade was accepted as the policy of England.
Nicholas, the Czar of Russia, was, after the fashion of his predecessors (and his successors), always waiting for the right moment to sweep down upon Constantinople. England had become only a land of shopkeepers, France was absorbed with her new Empire, and with trying on her fresh imperial trappings. The time seemed favorable for a move. The pious soul of Nicholas was suddenly stirred by certain restrictions laid by the Sultan upon the Christians in Palestine. He demanded that he be made the Protector of Christianity in the Turkish Empire, by an arrangement which would in fact transfer the Sovereignty from Constantinople to St. Petersburg.
That mass of Oriental corruption known as the Ottoman Empire, held together by no vital forces, was ready to fall into ruin at one vigorous touch. It was an anachronism in modern Europe, where its cruelty was only limited by its weakness. That such an odious, treacherous despotism should so strongly appeal to the sympathies of England that she was willing to enter upon a life-and-death struggle for its maintenance, let those believe who can.—Her rushing to the defence of Turkey, was about as sincere as Russia's interest in the Christians in Palestine.
The simple truth beneath all these diplomatic subterfuges was of course that Russia wanted Constantinople, and England would at any cost prevent her getting it. The keys to the East must, in any event, not belong to Russia, her only rival in Asia.
France had no Eastern Empire to protect, so her participation in the struggle is at first not so easy to comprehend, until we reflect that she had an ambitious and parvenu Emperor. To have Europe see him in confidential alliance with England, was alone worth a war; while a vigorous foreign policy would help to divert attention from the recent treacheries by which he had reached a throne.
[Sidenote: War with Russia, 1854.]
Such were some of the hidden springs of action which in 1854 brought about the Crimean War,—one of the most deadly and destructive of modern times. Two great Christian kingdoms had rushed to the defence of the worst Government ever known, and the best blood in England was being poured into Turkish soil.
The Russians soon found that the English were no less skilled as fighters, than as shopkeepers. They were victorious from the very first, even when the numbers were ill-matched. But one immortal deed of valor must have made her tremble before the spirit it revealed.
Six hundred cavalrymen, in obedience to an order which all knew was a blunder, dashed into a valley lined with cannon, and charged an army of 30,000 men!
"Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldiers knew
Some one had blundered.
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do,—and die,
As into the Valley of Death
Rode the six hundred."
The horrible blunder at Balaklava was not the only one. One incapable general was followed by another, and routine and red-tape were more deadly than Russian shot and shell.
Food and supplies beyond their utmost power of consumption, were hurried to the army by grateful England. Thousands of tons of wood for huts, shiploads of clothing and profuse provision for health and comfort, reached Balaklava.
While the tall masts of the ships bearing these treasures were visible from the heights of Sebastopol, men there were perishing for lack of food, fuel and clothing. In rags, almost barefoot, half-fed, often without fuel even to cook their food, in that terrible winter on the heights, whole regiments of heroes became extinct, because there was not sufficient administrative ability to convey the supplies to a perishing army!
So wretched was the hospital service, that to be sent there meant death. Gangrene carried off four out of five. Men were dying at a rate which would have extinguished the entire army in a year and a half. It was Florence Nightingale who redeemed this national disgrace, and brought order, care and healing into the camps.
When England recalls with pride the valor and the victories in the Crimea, let her remember it was the manhood in the ranks which achieved it. When all was over, war had slain its thousands,—but official incapacity its tens of thousands!
It was a costly victory: Russia was humiliated, was even shut out from the waters of her own Black Sea, where she had hitherto been supreme. To two million Turks was preserved the privilege of oppressing eight million Christians; and for this,—twenty thousand British youth had perished. But—the way to India was unobstructed!
England's career of conquest in India was not altogether of her own seeking. As a neighboring province committed outrages upon its British neighbors, it became necessary in self-defence to punish it; and such punishment, invariably led to its subjugation. In this way one province after another was subdued, until finally in the absorption of the Kingdom of Oude (1856) the natural boundary of the Himalaya Mountains had been reached, and the conquest was complete. The little trading company of British merchants had become an Empire, vast and rich beyond the wildest dreams of romance.
The British rule was upon the whole beneficent. The condition of the people was improved, and there was little dissatisfaction except among the deposed native princes, who were naturally filled with hate and bitterness. The large army required to hold such an amount of territory, was to a great extent recruited from the native population, the Sepoys, as they were called, making good soldiers.
[Sidenote: Sepoy Rebellion, 1857-1858.]
In 1857 the King of the Oude and some of the native princes cunningly devised a plan of undermining the British by means of their Sepoys, and circumstances afforded a singular opportunity for carrying out their design.
A new rifle had been adopted, which required a greased cartridge, for which animal grease was used. The Sepoys were told this was a deep-laid plot to overthrow their native religions. The Mussulman was to be eternally lost by defiling his lips with the fat of swine, and the Hindu, by the indignity offered to the venerated Cow. These English had tried to ruin them not alone in this world, but in the next.
[Sidenote: Massacre at Cawnpore.]
Thrilled with horror, terror-stricken, the dusky soldiers were converted into demons. Mutinies arose simultaneously at twenty-two stations; not only officers, but Europeans, were slaughtered without mercy. At Cawnpore was the crowning horror. After a siege of many days the garrison capitulated to Nana Sahib and his Sepoys. The officers were shot, and their wives, daughters, sisters and babes, 206 in number, were shut up in a large apartment which had been used by the ladies for a ballroom.
After eighteen days of captivity, the horrors of which will never be known, five men with sabres, in the twilight, were seen to enter the room and close the door. There were wild cries and shrieks and groans. Three times a hacked and a blunted sabre was passed out of a window in exchange for a sharper one. Finally the groans and moans gradually ceased and all was still. The next morning a mass of mutilated remains were thrown into an empty well.
Two days later the avenger came in the person of General Havelock. The
Sepoys were conquered and a policy of merciless retribution followed.
In that well at Cawnpore was forever buried sympathy for the mutinous Indian. When we recall that, we can even hear with calmness of Sepoys fired from the cannon's mouth. From that moment it was the cause of men in conflict with demons, civilization in deadly struggle with cruel, treacherous barbarism. We cannot advocate meeting atrocity with atrocity, nor can we forget that it was a Christian nation fighting with one debased and infidel. But terrible surgery is sometimes needed to extirpate disease.
Greed for territory, and wrong, and injustice may have mingled with the acquisition of an Indian Empire, but posterity will see only a majestic uplifting of almost a quarter of the human family from debased barbarism, to a Christian civilization; and all through the instrumentality of a little band of trading settlers from a small far- off island in the northwest of Europe.
CHAPTER XIV.
[Sidenote: Atlantic Cable, 1858.]
But there were other things besides famine and wars taking place in the Kingdom of the young Queen. A greater and a subtler force than steam had entered into the life of the people. A miracle had happened in 1858, when an electric wire threaded its way across the Atlantic, and two continents conversed as friends sitting hand in hand.
[Sidenote: Daguerre's Discovery, 1839.]
Another miracle had then just been achieved in the discovery of certain chemical conditions, by which scenes and objects would imprint themselves in minutest detail upon a prepared surface. A sort of magic seemed to have entered into life, quickening and intensifying all its processes. Enlarged knowledge opened up new theories of disease and created a new Art of healing. Surgery, with its unspeakable anguish, was rendered painless by anaesthetics. Mechanical invention was so stimulated that all the processes of labor were quickened and improved.
[Sidenote: First World's Fair, 1851.]
In 1851 the Prince Consort conceived the idea of a great Exposition, which should under one roof gather all the fruits of this marvellous advance, and Sydenham Palace, a gigantic structure of glass and iron, was erected.
In literature, Tennyson was preserving English valor in immortal verse. Thackeray and Dickens, in prose as immortal, were picturing the social lights and shadows of the Victorian Age.
[Sidenote: Death of Prince Albert, 1861.]
In 1861 a crushing blow fell upon the Queen in the death of the Prince Consort. America treasures kindly memory of Prince Albert, on account of his outspoken friendship in the hour of her need. During the war of the Rebellion, while the fate of our country seemed hanging in the balance, we had few friends in England, where people seemed to look with satisfaction upon our probable dismemberment.
We are not likely to forget the three shining exceptions:—Prince
Albert—John Bright—and John Stuart Mill.
[Sidenote: Suez Canal.]
It was while that astute diplomatist, Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield) was Prime Minister, that French money, skill and labor opened up the waterway between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. It would never do to have France command such a strategic point on the way to the East. England was alert. She lost not a moment. The impecunious Khedive was offered by telegraph $20,000,000 for his interest in the Suez Canal, nearly one-half of the whole capital stock. The offer was accepted with no less alacrity than it was made. So with the Arabian Port of Aden, which she already possessed, and with a strong enough financial grasp upon impoverished Egypt to secure the right of way, should she need it, England had made the Canal which France dug, practically her own.
[Sidenote: Victoria Crowned Empress of India, 1876]
Lord Beaconsfield had crowned his dramatic and picturesque Ministerial career by placing a new diadem on the head of the widowed Queen, who was now Empress of India. His successor, William Ewart Gladstone, the great leader of the Liberal party, was content with a less showy field. He had in 1869 relieved Ireland from the unjust burden of supporting a Church the tenets of which she considered blasphemous; and one which her own, the Roman Catholic, had for three centuries been trying to overthrow. We cannot wonder that the memory of a tyranny so odious is not easily effaced; nor that there is less gratitude for its removal, than bitterness that it should so long have been.
[Sidenote: Disestablishment of Irish Branch of Church of England, 1869.]
The disestablishment of the English Church in Ireland was one of the most righteous acts of this reign. Whether the great English Statesman will be equally successful in securing Home Rule for that unhappy land, upon which he has staked the final effort of his life, remains to be seen.
The Irish question is such a tangled web of wrong and injustice complicated by folly and outrage, that the wisest and best-intentioned statesmanship is baffled. Whether the conditions would be improved by giving them their own Parliament, can only be determined by experiment; and that experiment England is not yet willing to try.
History affords few spectacles of its kind more impressive than Mr. Gladstone at 86, with the ardor and energy of youth, battling for a measure he believes so vitally necessary to the Nation. It is a pity that for Americans his greatness is tarnished and belief in the infallibility of his judgment shaken, by the memory that he upheld the attack upon our National life in 1860; and that he, seemingly without regret, prophesied our downfall.
The work of Parliamentary reform commenced in 1832 has moved steadily on through this reign. By successive acts the franchise has extended farther and farther, until a final limit is almost reached; and side by side with this has been a corresponding increase in educational facilities, "because," as a Peer cynically remarked, "we must educate our Masters!"
So many reforms have been accomplished during this reign, the time seems not far distant when there will be little more for Liberals to urge, or for Conservatives and the House of Lords to obstruct. Monarchy is absolutely shorn of its dangers. The House of Commons, which is the actual ruling power of the Kingdom, is only the expression of the popular will.
We are accustomed to regard American freedom as the one supreme type. But it is not. The popular will in England reaches the springs of Government more freely, more swiftly, and more imperiously, than it does in Republican America. It comes as a stern mandate, which must be obeyed on the instant. The Queen of England has less power than the President of the United States. He can form a definite policy, select his own Ministry to carry it out, and to some extent have his own way for four years, whether the people like it or not. The Queen cannot do this for a day. Her Ministry cannot stand an hour, with a policy disapproved by the Commons. Not since Anne has a sovereign refused signature to an Act of Parliament. The Georges, and William IV., continued to exercise the power of dismissing Ministers at their pleasure. But since Victoria, an unwritten law forbids it, and with this vanishes the last remnant of a personal Government. The end long sought is attained.
The history of no other people affords such an illustration of a steadily progressive national development from seed to blossom, compelled by one persistent force. Freedom in England has not been wrought by cataclysm as in France, but has unfolded like a plant from a life within; impeded and arrested sometimes, but patiently biding its time, and then steadily and irresistibly pressing outward; one leaf after another freeing itself from the detaining force. Only a few more remain to be unclosed, and we shall behold the consummate flower of fourteen centuries;—centuries in which the most practical nation in the world has steadily pursued an ideal! The ideal of individual freedom subordinated only to the good of the whole.
The triumph of England has been the triumph not of genius, nor of intellect, but of character. It is those cross-threads of stubborn homely traits, the tenacity of purpose, the reluctance to change, the adherence to habit, usage and tradition, which have toughened the fabric almost to indestructibility. These traits are illustrated in the persistence of the hereditary principle in the royal line. We look in vain for another such instance. The blood of Cerdic, the first Saxon "Ealdorman" (495), flows in the veins of Victoria. She is 38th remove from Egbert, first Saxon King of consolidated England (802), 26th from William the Conqueror (1066), and 9th in descent from that picturesque and lovely criminal, Mary Stuart (1587). There have been wars, and foreign invasions,—a Danish and a Norman conquest, the overturning of dynasties, and Revolutions, and a "Protectorate," and yet—there sits upon the throne to-day a Queen descended by unbroken line from Cerdic the Saxon!
Queen Victoria is undoubtedly indebted to the wise counsel and guidance of the Prince Consort in the early decades of her reign. Not one act of folly has marred its even current. She has held up to the nation a high ideal of wifehood, motherhood, and of domestic virtue. None of her predecessors have bound their people to them with ties so human, her griefs and experiences moving them as their own. We think of her more as an exalted type of Woman, than as Sovereign of the most marvellous Empire the World ever saw;—its area three times that of Europe, representing every zone, all products, and every race!
How long England will be capable of sending out a vital current sufficient to nourish such distant extremities none can tell; or whether the far-off Colonies of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand will increase their independent life, until they become detached Sovereignties like the United States. If that day ever comes, like the Mother of a generation of grown children, with independent homes of their own,—England will sit with folded hands, her life-work done.
Let no American forget, that England before the Restoration is as much
our England as theirs. That the memories of Crecy, of Blenheim, of
Marston Moor and Naseby, are our great inheritance too. That Chaucer,
Milton, Shakespeare, belong to the humblest American as much as to
Victoria.
The branch has grown far from the parent tree since the 17th Century; and the England of Tennyson and Herbert Spencer is only a very distant cousin. She has not always treated us well, has not been chary of criticism, nor prodigal of praise, nor did she sympathize with us in the day of our peril and misfortune. But for all that—sharing the same great heritage of race and of literature, speaking in the same language the same thoughts and impulses, there must always exist between us a tie, such as can bind us to no other nation upon the earth.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Evolution of an Empire, by Mary Parmele