Part 44

The Unionist government which came into power in 1895 lasted, with certain changes of _personnel_, till 1905, with a break caused by the dissolution of 1900. History may hereafter conclude that the most significant circumstance of the earlier period is to be found in the demonstration of loyalty and affection to which the sixtieth anniversary of Queen Victoria's accession led in 1897. Ten years before, her jubilee had been the occasion of enthusiastic rejoicings, and the queen's progress through London to a service of thanksgiving at Westminster had impressed the imagination of her subjects and proved the affection of her people. But the rejoicings of 1887 were forgotten amid the more striking demonstrations ten years later. It was seen then that the queen, by her conduct and character, had gained a popularity which has had no parallel in history, and had won a place in the hearts of her subjects which perhaps no other monarch had ever previously enjoyed. There was no doubt that, if the opinion of the English-speaking races throughout the world could have been tested by a plebiscite, an overwhelming majority would have declared that the fittest person for the rule of the British empire was the gracious and kindly lady who for sixty years, in sorrow and in joy, had so worthily discharged the duties of her high position. This remarkable demonstration was not confined to the British empire alone. In every portion of the globe the sixtieth anniversary of the queen's reign excited interest; in every country the queen's name was mentioned with affection and respect; while the people of the United States vied with the subjects of the British empire in praise of the queen's character and in expressions of regard for her person. Only a year or two before, an obscure dispute on the boundary of British Venezuela had brought the United States and Great Britain within sight of a quarrel. The jubilee showed conclusively that, whatever politicians might say, the ties of blood and kinship, which united the two peoples, were too close to be severed by either for some trifling cause; that the wisest heads in both nations were aware of the advantages which must arise from the closer union of the Anglo-Saxon races; and that the true interests of both countries lay in their mutual friendship. A war in which the United States was subsequently engaged with Spain cemented this feeling. The government and the people of the United States recognized the advantage which they derived from the goodwill of Great Britain in the hour of their necessity, and the two nations drew together as no other two nations had perhaps ever been drawn together before.

Omdurman, Fashoda.

Jameson Raid.

If the jubilee was a proof of the closer union of the many sections of the British empire, and of their warm attachment to their sovereign, it also gave expression to the "imperialism" which was becoming a dominant factor in British politics. Few people realized the mighty change which in this respect had been effected in thought and feeling. Forty years before, the most prominent English statesmen had regarded with anxiety the huge responsibilities of a world-wide empire. In 1897 the whole tendency of thought and opinion was to enlarge the burden of which the preceding generation had been weary. The extension of British influence, the protection of British interests, were almost universally advocated; and the few statesmen who repeated in the 'nineties the sentiments which would have been generally accepted in the 'sixties, were regarded as "Little Englanders." It is important to note the consequences which these new ideas produced in Africa. Both in the north and in the south of this great and imperfectly explored continent, memories still clung which were ungrateful to imperialism. In the north, the murder of Gordon was still unavenged; and the vast territory known as the Sudan had escaped from the control of Egypt. In the south, war with the Transvaal had been concluded by a British defeat; and the Dutch were elated, the English irritated, at the recollection of Majuba. In 1896 Lord Salisbury's government decided on extending the Anglo-Egyptian rule over the Sudan, and an expedition was sent from Egypt under the command of Sir Herbert (afterwards Lord) Kitchener to Khartum. Few military expeditions have been more elaborately organized, or have achieved a more brilliant success. The conquest of the country was achieved in three separate campaigns in successive years. In September 1898 the Sudanese forces were decisively beaten, with great slaughter, in the immediate neighbourhood of Omdurman; and Khartum became thenceforward the capital of the new province, which was placed under Lord Kitchener's rule. Soon after this decisive success, it was found that a French expedition under Major Marchand had reached the upper Nile and had hoisted the French flag at Fashoda. It was obvious that the French could not be allowed to remain at a spot which the khedive of Egypt claimed as Egyptian territory; and after some negotiation, and some irritation, the French were withdrawn. In South Africa still more important events were in the meanwhile progressing. Ever since the independence of the South African Republic had been virtually conceded by the convention of 1884, unhappy differences had prevailed between the Dutch and British residents in the Transvaal. The discovery of gold at Johannesburg and elsewhere in 1885-1886 had led to a large immigration of British and other colonists. Johannesburg had grown into a great and prosperous city. The foreign population of the Transvaal, which was chiefly English, became in a few years more numerous than the Boers themselves, and they complained that they were deprived of all political rights, that they were subjected to unfair taxation, and that they were hampered in their industry and unjustly treated by the Dutch courts and Dutch officials. Failing to obtain redress, at the end of 1895 certain persons among them made preparations for a revolution. Dr Jameson, the administrator of Rhodesia, accompanied by some British officers, actually invaded the Transvaal. His force, utterly inadequate for the purpose, was stopped by the Boers, and he and his fellow-officers were taken prisoners. There was no doubt that this raid on the territory of a friendly state was totally unjustifiable. Unfortunately, Dr Jameson's original plans had been framed at the instance of Cecil Rhodes, the prime minister at the Cape, and many persons thought that they ought to have been suspected by the colonial office in London. England at any rate would have had no valid ground of complaint if the leaders of a buccaneering force had been summarily dealt with by the Transvaal authorities. The president of the republic, Kruger, however, handed over his prisoners to the British authorities, and parliament instituted an inquiry by a select committee into the circumstances of the raid. The inquiry was terminated somewhat abruptly. The committee acquitted the colonial office of any knowledge of the plot; but a good many suspicions remained unanswered. The chief actors in the raid were tried under the Foreign Enlistment Act, found guilty, and subsequently released after short terms of imprisonment. Rhodes himself was not removed from the privy council, as his more extreme accusers demanded; but he had to abandon his career in Cape politics for a time, and confine his energies to the development of Rhodesia, which had been added to the empire through his instrumentality in 1888-1889.

Boer War, 1899.

In consequence of these proceedings, the Transvaal authorities at once set to work to accumulate armaments, and they succeeded in procuring vast quantities of artillery and military stores. The British government would undoubtedly have been entitled to insist that these armaments should cease. It was obvious that they could only be directed against Great Britain; and no nation is bound to allow another people to prepare great armaments to be employed against itself. The criminal folly of the raid prevented the British government from making this demand. It could not say that the Transvaal government had no cause for alarm when British officers had attempted an invasion of its territory, and had been treated rather as heroes than as criminals at home. Ignorant of the strength of Great Britain, and elated by the recollection of their previous successes, the Boers themselves believed that a new struggle might give them predominance in South Africa. The knowledge that a large portion of the population of Cape Colony was of Dutch extraction, and that public men at the Cape sympathized with them in their aspirations, increased their confidence. In the meantime, while the Boers were silently and steadily continuing their military preparations, the British settlers at Johannesburg--the Uitlanders, as they were called--continued to demand consideration for their grievances. In the spring of 1899, Sir Alfred Milner, governor of the Cape, met President Kruger at Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange Free State, and endeavoured to accomplish that result by negotiation. He thought, at the time, that if the Uitlanders were given the franchise and a fair proportion of influence in the legislature, other difficulties might be left to settle themselves. The negotiations thus commenced unfortunately failed. The discussion, which had originally turned on the franchise, was enlarged by the introduction of the question of suzerainty or supremacy; and at last, in the beginning of October, when the rains of an African spring were causing the grass to grow on which the Boer armies were largely dependent for forage, the Boers declared war and invaded Natal. The British government had not been altogether happy in its conduct of the preceding negotiations. It was certainly unhappy in its preparations for the struggle. It made the great mistake of underrating the strength of its enemy; it suffered its agents to commit the strategical blunder of locking up the few troops it had in an untenable position in the north of Natal. It was not surprising, in such circumstances, that the earlier months of the war should have been memorable for a series of exasperating reverses. These reverses, however, were redeemed by the valour of the British troops, the spirit of the British nation, and the enthusiasm which induced the great autonomous colonies of the empire to send men to support the cause of the mother country. The gradual arrival of reinforcements, and the appointment of a soldier of genius--Lord Roberts--to the supreme command, changed the military situation; and, before the summer of 1900 was concluded, the places which had been besieged by the Boers--Kimberley, Ladysmith and Mafeking--had been successively relieved; the capitals of the Orange Free State and of the Transvaal had been occupied; and the two republics, which had rashly declared war against the British empire, had been formally annexed.

The close of 1900.

The defeat and dispersal of the Boer armies, and the apparent collapse of Boer resistance, induced a hope that the war was over; and the government seized the opportunity in 1900 to terminate the parliament, which had already endured for more than five years. The election was conducted with unusual bitterness; but the constituencies practically affirmed the policy of the government by maintaining, almost unimpaired, the large majority which the Unionists had secured in 1895. Unfortunately, the expectations which had been formed at the time of the dissolution were disappointed. The same circumstances which had emboldened the Boers to declare war in the autumn of 1899, induced them to renew a guerilla warfare in the autumn of 1900--the approach of an African summer supplying the Boers with the grass on which they were dependent for feeding their hardy horses. Guerilla bands suddenly appeared in different parts of the Orange River Colony and of the Transvaal. They interrupted the communications of the British armies; they won isolated victories over British detachments; they even invaded Cape Colony. Thus the last year of the century closed in disappointment and gloom. The serious losses which the war entailed, the heavy expenses which it involved, and the large force which it absorbed, filled thoughtful men with anxiety.

The death of the queen.

No one felt more sincerely for the sufferings of her soldiers, and no one regretted more truly the useless prolongation of the struggle, than the venerable lady who occupied the throne. She had herself lost a grandson (Prince Christian Victor) in South Africa; and sorrow and anxiety perhaps told even on a constitution so unusually strong as hers. About the middle of January 1901 it was known that she was seriously ill; on the 22nd she died. The death of the queen thus occurred immediately after the close of the century over so long a period of which her reign had extended.

The queen's own life is dealt with elsewhere (see VICTORIA, QUEEN), but the Victorian era is deeply marked in English history. During her reign the people of Great Britain doubled their number; but the accumulated wealth of the country increased at least threefold, and its trade sixfold. All classes shared the prevalent prosperity. Notwithstanding the increase of population, the roll of paupers at the end of the reign, compared with the same roll at the beginning, stood as 2 stands to 3; the criminals as 1 to 2. The expansion abroad was still more remarkable. There were not 200,000 white persons in Australasia when the queen came to the throne; there were nearly 5,000,000 when she died. The great Australian colonies were almost created in her reign; two of them--Victoria and Queensland--owe their name to her; they all received those autonomous institutions, under which their prosperity has been built up, during its continuance. Expansion and progress were not confined to Australasia. The opening months of the queen's reign were marked by rebellion in Canada. The close of it saw Canada one of the most loyal portions of the Empire. In Africa, the advance of the red line which marks the bounds of British dominion was even more rapid; while in India the Punjab, Sind, Oudh and Burma were some of the acquisitions added to the British empire while the queen was on the throne. When she died one square mile in four of the land in the world was under the British flag, and at least one person out of every five persons alive was a subject of the queen.

Material progress was largely facilitated by industry and invention. The first railways had been made, the first steamship had been built, before the queen came to the throne. But, so far as railways are concerned, none of the great trunk lines had been constructed in 1837; the whole capital authorized to be spent on railway construction did not exceed L55,000,000; and, five years after the reign had begun, there were only 18,000,000 passengers. The paid-up capital of British railways in 1901 exceeded L1,100,000,000; the passengers, not including season ticket-holders, also numbered 1,100,000,000; and the sum annually spent in working the lines considerably exceeded the whole capital authorized to be spent on their construction in 1837. The progress of the commercial marine was still more noteworthy. In 1837 the entire commercial navy comprised 2,800,000 tons, of which less than 100,000 tons were moved by steam. At the end of the reign the tonnage of British merchant vessels had reached 13,700,000 tons, of which more than 11,000,000 tons were moved by steam. At the beginning of the reign it was supposed to be impossible to build a steamer which could either cross the Atlantic, or face the monsoon in the Red Sea. The development of steam navigation since then had made Australia much more accessible than America was in 1837, and had brought New York, for all practical purposes, nearer to London than Aberdeen was at the commencement of the reign. Electricity had even a greater effect on communication than steam on locomotion; and electricity, as a practical invention, had its origin in the reign. The first experimental telegraph line was only erected in the year in which Queen Victoria came to the throne. Submarine telegraphy, which had done so much to knit the empire together, was not perfected for many years afterwards; and long ocean cables were almost entirely constructed in the last half of the reign. (S. W.)

Reign of Edward VII.

On the death of Queen Victoria, the prince of Wales succeeded to the throne, with the title of Edward VII. (q.v.). The coronation fixed for June in the following year was at the last moment stopped by the king's illness with appendicitis, but he recovered marvellously from the operation and the ceremony took place in August. His excellent health and activity in succeeding years struck every one with astonishment. The Boer War had at last been brought to an end in May 1902 (see TRANSVAAL), and the king had the satisfaction of seeing South Africa settle down and eventually receive self-government. The political history of his reign, which ended with his death in May 1910, is dealt with in detail in separate biographical and other articles in this work (see especially those on Lord Salisbury, Mr A. J. Balfour, Mr J. Chamberlain, Lord Rosebery, Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, Mr H. H. Asquith, Mr D. Lloyd George, and on the history of the various portions of the British Empire); and in this place only a summary need be given. The king himself (see EDWARD VII.), who nobly earned the title of Edward the Peacemaker, played no small part in the domestic and international politics of these years; and contemporary publicists, who had become accustomed to Victorian traditions, gradually realized that, within the limits of the constitutional monarchy, there was much more scope for the initiative of a masculine sovereign in public life than had been supposed by the generation which grew up after the death of his father in 1862. Edward VII. made the Crown throughout all classes of society a popular power which it had not been in England for long ages. And while the growing rivalry between England and Germany, in international relations, was continually threatening danger, his influence in cementing British friendship on all other sides was of the most marked description. His sudden death was felt, not only throughout the empire but throughout the world, with even more poignant emotion than that of Queen Victoria herself, for his personality had been much more in the forefront.

The Crisis of 1910.

The end of his reign coincided with a domestic constitutional crisis, to which party politics had been working up more and more acutely for several years. The Tariff Reform propaganda of Mr Chamberlain (q.v.) in 1903 convulsed the Conservative party, and the long period of Unionist domination came to an end in November 1905. Mr Balfour (q.v.), who became prime minister in 1902 on Lord Salisbury's retirement, resigned, and was succeeded by Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman (q.v.), as head of the Liberal party; and the general election of January 1906 resulted in an overwhelming victory for the Liberals and their allies, the Labour party (now a powerful force in politics) and the Irish Nationalists. Just before Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman's death in April 1908 he was succeeded as prime minister by Mr Asquith, a leader of far higher personal ability though with less hold on the affections of his party. The Liberals had long arrears to make up in their political programme, and their supremacy in the House of Commons was an encouragement to assert their views in legislation. In several directions, and notably in administration, they carried their policy into effect; but the House of Lords (see PARLIAMENT) was an obvious stumbling-block to some of their more important Bills, and the Unionist control of that House speedily made itself felt, first in wrecking the Education Bill of 1906, then in throwing out the Licensing Bill of 1908, and finally (see LLOYD GEORGE, D.) in forcing a dissolution by the rejection of the budget of 1909, with its novel proposals for the increased taxation of land and licensed houses. The Unionist party in the country had, meanwhile, been recovering from the Tariff Reform divisions of 1903, and was once more solid under Mr Balfour in favour of its new and imperial policy; but the campaign against the House of Lords started by Mr Lloyd George and the Liberal leaders, who put in the forefront the necessity of obtaining statutory guarantees for the passing into law of measures deliberately adopted by the elected Chamber, resulted in the return of Mr Asquith's government to office at the election of January 1910. The Unionists came back equal in numbers to the Liberals, but the latter could also count on the Labour party and the Irish Nationalists; and the battle was fully arrayed for a frontal attack on the powers of the Second Chamber when the king's death in May upset all calculations. This unthought-of complication seemed to act like the letting of blood in an apoplectic patient.

Accession of George V.

The prince of Wales became king as George V. (q.v.), and a temporary truce was called; and the reign began with a serious attempt between the leaders of the two great parties, by private conference, to see whether compromise was not possible (see PARLIAMENT). Apart from the parliamentary crisis, really hingeing on the difficulty of discovering a means by which the real will of the people should be carried out without actually making the House of Commons autocratically omnipotent, but also without allowing the House of Lords to obstruct a Liberal government merely as the organ of the Tory party, the new king succeeded to a noble heritage. The monarchy itself was popular, the country was prosperous and in good relations with the world, except for the increasing naval rivalry with Germany, and the consciousness of imperial solidarity had made extraordinary progress among all the dominions. However the domestic problems in the United Kingdom might be solved, the future of the greatness of the English throne lay with its headship of an empire, loyal to the core, over which the sun never sets. (H. Ch.)

XIII.--SOURCES AND WRITERS OF ENGLISH HISTORY

The attempt here made to combine a bibliography of English history with some account of the progress of English historical writing is beset with some difficulty. The evidential value of what a writer says is quite distinct from the literary art with which he says it; the real sources of history are not the works of historians, but records and documents written with no desire to further any literary purpose. Domesday Book is unique as a source of medieval history, but it does not count in the development of English historical writing. That is quite a secondary consideration; for there was much English history before any Englishman could write; and even after he could write, his compositions constitute a minor part of the evidence.