Part 6

The sacred beauty of the marriage tie no people hold higher than do the Pan-Angles. With them it is not a status imposed from without, but the voluntary union of two individuals. John Stuart Mill voiced an aspiration of the entire Pan-Angle civilization when he wrote: "What marriage may be in the case of two persons of cultivated faculties, identical in opinions and purposes, between whom there exists that best kind of equality, similarity of powers and capacities with reciprocal superiority in them--so that each can enjoy the luxury of looking up to the other, and can have alternately the pleasure of leading and of being led in the path of development--I will not attempt to describe. To those who can conceive it, there is no need; to those who cannot, it would appear the dream of an enthusiast. But I maintain, with the profoundest conviction, that this, and this only, is the ideal of marriage; . . . "[73-1]

In no sphere is the individualism of the Pan-Angle more rampant than in matters of religion. Liberty of conscience to him is as necessary as liberty of body, and he has struggled to obtain it with the same persistency.

Once the status of nationality carried with it {74} automatic inclusion in the national church. A diversity of faiths in one nation was unthinkable. Any who refused to conform, in semblance at least, were considered by the group as outsiders and enemies, to be harried and pillaged, perhaps slaughtered. Later, though leave to live was granted to those of minority creeds, they were debarred from the exercise of certain civil privileges. In the British Isles, not until 1858 were Jews able to take oaths as members of the Houses of Parliament. Still later, though all might share equally in the duties and rights of citizenship, all were compelled to contribute directly or, indirectly to the support of the state church, and, unless openly avowing otherwise, were presumed to belong to it. Some Pan-Angles still linger in this stage--those, for example, who reside in Quebec or England. This is the significance of the state church to-day.

To the majority of the Pan-Angles, however, religion is a private matter--not a public matter. In short, it is a concern in which the majority are not to interfere with the minority and in which the minority are not asked to acquiesce in the feelings of the majority. This is a condition not easily achieved. Migration from the British Isles by no means ended all contention. "Everywhere, indeed, that British settlers went this strife of sects went with them."[74-1] Six out of the seven nations were founded after our British predecessors had begun the battle for religious freedom. All six have known state churches in one form or {75} another, sometimes with attendant persecutions. To-day five thrive without state churches. Even in Quebec and England taxation for the benefit of one's neighbour's church is the only penalty against free worshipping. Elsewhere, throughout the Pan-Angle world, one may hold any creed he will, and the state does not ask him to contribute to any church, nor does the state assist, or recognize one creed above another.

In certain places, notably portions of the United States, individualism in religion goes to extremes. In 1906 there were estimated to be in that country one hundred and eighty-six different kinds of Protestant churches,[75-1] some of them approaching the bizarre in character, others so like one another that the differences which divided them were scarcely discernible. Certain denominations were known only in very circumscribed areas.[75-2] There may be a certain extravagance in maintaining the large amount of equipment necessary for so many establishments. Apart from that, however, there seems to be no objection to the multitudinousness of American faiths that is not more than balanced by the benefits to the individual from free self-expression.

"After God had carried us safe to _New England_, and wee had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, rear'd convenient places for {76} Gods worship, and setled the Civill Government: One of the next things we longed for, and looked after was to advance _Learning_ and perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministery to the Churches, when our present Ministers shall lie in the Dust."[76-1] So runs an account of the founding of one of the Pan-Angle universities as it was written in 1643. In a near-by city a public library was later established. On the building that shelters it to-day are inscribed these sentences: "The Commonwealth requires the education of the people as the safeguard of order and liberty," and "Built by the people and dedicated to the advancement of learning." Over the door are the words: "Free to all."

Here is evidenced the attitude of one early colony toward education, and it is typical of all. Education, education free to all, education compulsory on all, is the ideal in each of the six new nations. Free instruction is in some places offered to a child from the age of three, when he enters kindergarten, to any age at which he wishes to attend the university. For certain years, very generally six to fourteen, attendance at school is compulsory. There is no discrimination in regard to sex, and the classes are frequently co-educational. Parents are in the main allowed to send children to private and church schools when these are of satisfactory excellence; though in many places no such exist, and no stigma is in any way attached to the acceptance of free education. In many places no other sort has ever been dreamed of.

The British Isles meanwhile have not been {77} insensible to the same impulses. If popular education there has seemed to lag behind that of the younger nations, it is because the British Isles had not so free a field for change. There, a more complex social structure, and a tradition that envelops every department of life, interfere with the movement that would cast aside the old and adopt the new. Reforms must go slowly under such conditions, but the opportunity for education for all is there now an accomplished fact. In 1832 began the history of state education in the British Isles.[77-1] To-day elementary education is compulsory between the ages of five and fourteen,[77-2] and free, if one desires to take it so. Since 1902 public grants to secondary schools have opened their doors to certain numbers of non-paying pupils. The differences between the educational systems of the British Isles and those of the other English-speaking nations can now be said to be differences of method or degree only, but not of spirit.

Throughout our civilization, education opens the way to achievement, "the only real patent of nobility in the modern world."[77-3] The success or failure of the group is known to depend on the individual. He holds the ballot, makes the laws, enforces them; his religion is part of the faith of the land and determines the character of its composite; his ideals of marriage are expressed in the practice of the race. Organization and a few picked men do not control our destinies. To {78} ensure the future of the group we educate our citizens. We "advance _Learning_ and perpetuate it to Posterity" so that wisdom may be heard in our councils, and that ballots may register considered judgments.

As individualists the Pan-Angles have come to their present state. As individualists they must continue to work out their destiny. The right they prize most is the right to develop further in individualism. That right will be secured to Pan-Angles only when they have cause to fear no human power.

[48-1] Modern England, 50,916 square miles, and all Pan Angle nations and their dependencies, 16,897,126. See _post_, p. 81, note 1.

[48-2] _Round Table_, London, February 1911, p. 207: "1817, 1823, 1825, 1828, 1832, 1835, 1836."

[48-3] A. W. Jose, _History of Australasia_, Sydney, 1911, p. 187.

[49-1] Cf. _Ency. Brit._, vol. xxvi. pp. 692-693, on the story of Texas.

[49-2] For an account of which, see Beckles Willson, _The Great Company_ (1667-1871), London, 1900.

[50-1] _The Cleveland Plain Dealer_, Cleveland, Ohio, September 2, 1913; but cf. _United Empire_, London, December 1913, p. 934 concerning a statue to his memory at Berbera.

[50-2] _Ency. Brit._, vol. ix. p. 556.

[50-3] _Ibid._, vol. iv. p. 660.

[51-1] Pierre Leroy-Beaulieu, _Les Etats-Unis au Vingtième Siècle_, Paris, 1904, pp. 37, 38, claims that the country to the south of the long Canadian frontier was opened up by successive waves of people of the same blood, the pioneers being almost entirely sons of pioneers.

[51-2] _Ency. Brit._, vol. xxvii. p. 691: "The new life bore most hardly upon women; and, if the record of woman's share in the work of American colonization could be fully made up, the price paid for the final success would seem enormous."

[51-3] W. M. West, _Modern History_, Boston, rev. ed., 1907, p. 300.

[52-1] C.A.W. Pownall, _Thomas Pownall_, London, 1908, pp. 400-401. _Cf._ Edmund Burke in _Conciliation with America_, par. 37.

[52-2] _Yearbook of the Commonwealth of Australia_, Melbourne, No. 4, 1911, p.122.

[53-1] J. E. Le Rossignol and W. D. Stewart, _State Socialism in New Zealand_, London [1911], p. 17: "The people of New Zealand are not doctrinaires, and the academic question as to the proper spheres of governmental and individual activity is seldom discussed. The State has taken up one thing after another as the result of concrete discussion of concrete cases. Usually, if not invariably, abuses have been thought to exist, which the State has been called upon to remedy: the great landowners have stood in the way of closer settlement: wages have been low and conditions of labour bad: rates of interest, insurance premiums, prices of coal, and rents of dwellings have been thought to be high: the oyster beds have been depleted by private exploitation: taxation has fallen too heavily upon the poor: for one cause or another there has been complaint, complaint has grown into agitation, and agitation into legislation."

[55-1] Arthur Murphy, _The Works of Cornelius Tacitus_, London, 1793, vol. iv. p. 16.

[56-1] _Ency. Brit._, vol. xxiii. p. 110.

[56-2] _Ibid._, vol. xx. p. 837: "The Angles, Saxons and other Teutonic races who conquered Britain brought to their new homes their own laws and customs, . . . and a certain rude representation in local affairs:' _Cf._ also Woodrow Wilson, _The State_, 1898, Boston, rev. ed., 1911, pp. 560, 561.

[56-3] _Ency. Brit._, vol. ix. p. 491.

[57-1] _Ency. Brit._, vol. xxiii. p. 109.

[57-2] _Ibid._, vol. xxiii. pp. 109-110.

[57-3] _Ibid._, vol. xxiii. p. 110.

[57-4] _Ibid._, vol. xxiii. p. 109: "In 1651 Isaac Penington the younger published a pamphlet entitled 'The fundamental right, safety and liberty of the People; which is radically in themselves, derivatively in the Parliament, their substitutes or representatives.'" Cf. _New English Dictionary_, Oxford, 1891, "Representative," where 1658 is mentioned as its first use.

[57-5] _Ency. Brit._, vol. xx. p. 835, and vol. ix. p. 491.

[57-6] The House of Lords contains a certain representative element in the Irish and Scottish members. These are some only of the peers of their respective countries, and are elected by their fellow peers to seats in the House of Lords--those from Ireland for life, and from Scotland for a session.

[58-1] _Ency. Brit._, vol. xii. p. 295.

[58-2] _Ibid._, p. 295.

[58-3] _Ibid._, vol. xxiii. p. 112.

[58-4] _Ibid._, vol. xxiii. p. 112.

[59-1] Alfred Caldecott, _English Colonization and Empire_, London, 1891, p. 129.

[59-2] Cf. _ante_, p. 56.

[60-1] Cf. _post_, p. 109, note 1.

[60-2] The variety of uses of the word "constitution" is referred to, _post_, pp. 95-108.

[60-3] _Cf._ W.H. Taft, _Popular Government_, New Haven, Connecticut, 1913, pp. 42-95, for a discussion of these three terms.

[61-1] C.A.W. Pownall, _Thomas Pownall_, London, 1908, pp. 207-208.

[62-1] Recourse to the grave process of impeachment lies outside normal procedure and is here disregarded.

[62-2] Cf. _post_, p. 113 _et seq._

[63-1] _Ency. Brit._, vol. xvii. pp. 315, 317; but also cf. _ibid._, vol. ix. p. 488: "It was the first of the many occasions in English history when the demand for reform took the shape of a reference back to old precedents, and now (as on all subsequent occasions) the party which opposed the crown read back into the ancient grants which they quoted a good deal more than had been actually conceded in them."

[65-1] W.H. Taft, _Popular Government_, New Haven, Connecticut, 1913, p. 155.

[65-2] The exception to this statement is apparent in the British Isles, where suffrage is a national affair, and no federal framework affords a basis for local option on this privilege.

[66-1] _Springfield_ (Massachusetts) _Weekly Republican_, November 20, 1913.

[67-1] W. B. Worsfold, _The Union of South Africa_, London, 1912, p. 126.

[67-2] _Ibid._, pp. 139-140.

[67-3] _An Analysis of the System of Government throughout the British Empire_, London, 1912, p. 44.

[68-1] _An Analysis of the System of Government throughout the British Empire_, London, 1912, pp. 44-45.

[68-2] Edward Jenks, _The Future of British Law: An Inaugural Lecture delivered before the University of Melbourne_, Melbourne, 1889, pp. 6-7.

[69-1] W.B. Worsfold, _The Union of South Africa_, London, 1912, p.438.

[70-1] A. V. Dicey, "A Common Citizenship for the English Race," in _Contemporary Review_, vol. lxxi., April 1897, p. 469.

[70-2] Edward Jenks, _The Future of British Law: An Inaugural Lecture delivered before the University of Melbourne_, Melbourne, 1889, p. 11.

[72-1] Eversley and Craies, _Marriage Laws of the British Empire_, London, 1910, pp. 61, 173, 192, 70, 239-392.

[73-1] John Stuart Mill, _The Subjection of Women_, London, 1906, p. 123.

[74-1] _United Empire_, London, January 1914, A. W. Tilby, "Christianity and the Empire," p. 57.

[75-1] _Ency. Brit._, vol. xxvii. p. 638.

[75-2] U.S. Bureau of the Census, _Special Reports of the Census: Religious Bodies: 1906_, Washington, D.C., 1910, pt. ii., pp. 225, 508, 626, 635, 659.

[76-1] _New England's First Fruits_, London, 1643, p.12.

[77-1] _Ency. Brit._, vol. viii. p. 971.

[77-2] _Whitaker's Almanack_, London, 1913, p. 489.

[77-3] Woodrow Wilson, _The State_, 1898, Boston, rev. ed., 1911, p.18.

{79}

IV

THE SEVEN NATIONS

"THE representatives of the great nations across the seas."

A British Colonial Secretary used these words[79-1] in a speech welcoming to the Imperial Conference of 1902 the Prime Ministers of the other Britannic governments. This should be enough to permit the terminology to any Pan-Angle, when he refers to New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Newfoundland or Canada, and the men who govern them. These "great nations across the seas" are themselves conscious of nationhood on a parity with that of the British Isles. A representative of one of them in the same year thus spoke of his country and its fellow nations: "The British Empire . . . a galaxy of independent nations . . . There is not in Canada at the present moment a single British soldier to maintain British supremacy--moreover it is Canadian soldiers who are today garrisoning Halifax . . . The whole Australian continent {80} has now been moulded into another nation under the flag . . . and I can see dawning in South Africa the day when there will be another Confederation . . . "[80-1] Eleven years later in that South Africa another national Prime Minister spoke of _his_ country and _his_ countrymen. "Their country was part of the British Empire. They could not get away from it; it was their Constitution; and yet they were as free as if they were their own State, and they took up the position--he had said so in England--that they were not a subject State, but part of the British Empire, and were on an equality. They were a sister State of England."[80-2]

When throughout these lands writers similarly use the word "nation," the student of Pan-Angle affairs need proceed to no further investigation, though he may be unable to justify the word by current dictionary definition. Enough if he notes its political significance. In the same class are such words as "independent," "self-governing," and "autonomous": subject to the same theoretical queries but established by the same practical usage. Anyone who would question such usage is silenced by the recognition that it only conforms to facts. On such facts is based the thesis of these pages.

The seven units of the Pan-Angle world differ {81} both in size and density of population,[81-1] Hence it might be objected that to classify according to these divisions is to neglect the relative strength and importance of the various political groups, Newfoundland is not as important in population or wealth as the British Isles; while near Canada, it cannot be considered a part of Canada, New Zealand is two-thirds as far from Australia as Newfoundland is from Scotland, and emphatically is no part of its huge neighbour,[81-2] One of its citizens writes: "Although one thousand miles distant from Australia at the nearest point, although situated in a different climate and inevitably destined to display a different national temperament, although already possessed of a national {82} character, national aspirations and national peculiarities, although already served by Imperial affiliation much better than it could be served by any mere local federation, the Australian Prime Minister has no deeper insight than to predict the sinking of New Zealand into the _status_ of a petty and subordinate Australian State. . . . before New Zealand denies its independence under the Empire, and seeks shelter under the mantle of the [Australian] Federal Parliament, there will be a new political heaven and a new political earth. At the present time the proposal is simply absurd." [82-1]

Some might prefer to treat the Pan-Angle world as made up of two groups, those under the British and American flags respectively. This, however, fails to give the true character of the five younger Britannic nations, and might suggest erroneously that they bear a position to the British Parliament similar to the position of the American states to the Congress of the United States. Some American may resent the implied insignificance of the forty-eight states, some of which are larger in size or population, or both, than certain of the Britannic nations. Texas is over twice as large as either the British Isles or New Zealand, and has a population about four times that of New Zealand, or somewhat less than that of Australia. Similarly, it may occur to an Australian, or a Canadian, or a South African, that the states of the first, or the provinces of the two latter nations should receive more prominence. Others again might consider that the yet undivided areas of the British Isles, which may some time be {83} organized under a federal system, or else the ancient historical parts as they were before the days of union, should be among the basic units of this discussion.

To all these questionings the same answer applies. It is not easy to generalize in a system which, like ours, is the result of growth and adaptation. There are many local peculiarities of governments and grades of autonomy which, significant in themselves, are immaterial to the question of Pan-Angle federation, and which for simplicity's sake are here ignored. The classification here used does not forbid others. Each reader may consider these people according to any scheme of which he approves. The seven nations here designated are entities. Their pride of personality is in most cases very great. This is reason enough, in spite of huge discrepancies in size and population, for utilizing a classification based on existing national feelings.

The British Isles[83-1] and the United States[83-2] are {84} entirely independent of each other and of all other powers. Neither recognizes the right of anyone to dictate to it in any matter, except by war or its threat. The other five of the Pan-Angle nations do not yet perhaps go so far.

In the past certainly the British government legislated for them as it saw fit. The abolition of slavery under the British flag early in the nineteenth century serves as an example. This outside interference while humane was even then considered arbitrary.

In South Africa "what mainly angered the Cape colonists was the inadequacy of the compensation which was awarded in their case. The value of the slaves on Dec. 1, 1834, when the Emancipation Act came into effect, was estimated by the commissioners specially appointed for the purpose at three million sterling. The sum allotted by the Imperial Government was no more than one and a quarter million, payable, not in South Africa, but in London, and with a deduction of any expenses incurred in carrying out the work of emancipation. The result was to impoverish the former slave owners, and to awaken in them a bitter feeling of resentment against the government which had deprived them of their property, and against the philanthropists by whom the policy of emancipation had been inspired."[84-1] This step had been taken without the consent of the governed, {85} the slave-holding communities having no representation in the Parliament that enacted the law.

Theoretically the same right exists to-day.[85-1] "In granting self-government to the British Dominions Britain did not change her constitution. Conscious that the British Government could not rule great communities in America, Australasia, and Africa, . . . Britain has agreed that they shall manage their own affairs. But she has never undertaken, and could not undertake, a clear division of functions, nor could she in theory explicitly divest herself of final responsibility in any sphere of government. The British North America Act is a constitution by which the relations of the Federal Government of Canada with the Provincial Governments are fully regulated and defined; but it is not a constitution by which the relations of that Federal Government with the Imperial Government are fully regulated or defined. . . . Any constitutional powers vested in the English Government before the grant of self-government to the Dominions are in theory still vested in that Government today."[85-2]

In practice this theoretical right has yielded to the stronger claim of self-government. "My vindication of the preference policy was given not at Ottawa or on Canadian soil, but in the heart of the Empire at London, at the Colonial Conference, when I declared to the Empire that {86} I and my colleagues of the Government were ready to make a trade treaty. We said, 'we are ready to discuss with you articles on which we can give you a preference, and articles on which you can give us a preference. We are ready to make with you a treaty of trade.' Mark those words coming from a colony to the mother country without offence being given or taken."[86-1] "What has never been questioned since the War of Independence is that a democracy pretending to a sovereignty over other democracies is either a phantom or the most intolerable of all oppressions."[86-2] "Nobody dreams in these days of the British Parliament making laws for Canada or Australia. Such an idea is alien to all thinking men, . . . [86-3]