Part 4

Other lands rich in promise came under the Pan-Angle gaze. Often there seemed the best of reasons why we should not go and live there. We thereupon set up additional factories at home and made cloth and knives above our own demands to send out to those countries in trade. By working at home in smoky cities we were able to gather the food and the luxuries we wanted from all parts of the world. These lands we have taken into our custody in order to guarantee our trade supremacy. Unproductive spots here and there, such as Gibraltar, Aden, Singapore, and Hong Kong, we have been forced to hold to facilitate and protect our trade. In the main we acquired some very valuable pieces--the most valuable in sight some of our rivals have thought. We never know how valuable a place may be, and, conversely, we never appreciate what a nuisance a place may be until after we have taken it. Yet, the nuisances we try to turn to useful account.

{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," in _The 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 to _Whitaker'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 his _Compleat 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 Young Boston Merchant_: Being the Reflections and Comments of Joseph Ballard 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 Times_ Weekly Edition, London, October 17, 1913.

[37-1] _The Times_ Weekly 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.

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III

INDIVIDUALISM

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 called _inquisitiveness_, 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 the _Victory_. 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.