Chapter X: Conclusion 227 (2)

That we who talk English go about with an assumption of superiority, there is abundant testimony. In 1676 an English ship visited Mauritius, then a possession of Holland. A modern historian quotes from the records of the Dutch Governor: "This breed imagine the Hollanders are of a lower stock, naturally inferior, who ought always to be humbly and servilely at their disposal."[35-3] A Bostonian, who sailed from his home port for Liverpool on news of the ratification of the treaty of Ghent, mentions a British army officer with whom he chatted in London in 1815: "The colonel complimented the American troops in a curious manner by observing that they were brave {36} and it was not to be wondered at since they were 'descendants of Englishmen.' It required all my gravity to make an acknowledging bow for this compliment I frequently found that the bravery displayed by the Americans in the last war was accounted for from this source."[36-1] "They [the Scots] _are_ bumptious, very bumptious," says Goldwin Smith. "They try to force their Burns down our throats."[36-2] "Do not, above all things," counsels an official circular addressed to British emigrants to Canada, "try to impress on your Canadian employer how much better we do things in England, for it will only make him dislike you and perhaps not care to keep you in his employ. Canadians, too, often resent criticism of their country or its methods, but you should remember that they have been working in Canada long before you were born, and that they are more likely than a stranger like yourself to know what suits that country best."[36-3] The American Ambassador, speaking in London in 1913, said "he was asked almost every day by the kindly people whom he met--and he could not too strongly emphasize the word 'kindly' since he had come to England--how they were getting on in the United States assimilating the endless hordes of people from all lands who came to their shores. He did not wish {37} to boast. He was a humble man from the humblest of countries. (Laughter.) But he was delighted to assure them that the Anglo-Saxon, or British, race, who settled the United States first, shaped its destinies, directed its energies, according to their conscience, against their own Motherland, and developed themselves and the great territory which they subdued, to this day, no matter how many men came from how many lands, still ruled it and led it. (Cheers.) And there was no time in sight when that would have changed. Every President of the United States had been of English or Scottish blood dominantly. Out of 121 mayors of cities only 11 per cent. had names which showed that they or their predecessors came from countries other than the United Kingdom. Only 14 per cent. of the representative men who took part in the government of the United States in the House of Representatives or the Senate bore foreign names, which left 86 per cent. who came from the United Kingdom. The Anglo-Saxon was quite as much the leader of men in the great Republic as he was in the great United Kingdom. That was not a boast; it was a natural phenomenon. It was destiny, and they could not help it if they would. Americans deserved no particular praise for it. They believed, just as Englishmen believed, that they were born to rule the world."[37-1] "That complacency which never deserts a true-born Englishman"[37-2] speaks wherever a Pan-Angle voice is raised. {38} Foreign testimony on this point in our character is unanimous, but no foreigner can demonstrate so vividly the arrogance of our self-satisfaction as do we in our every act and attitude. Moreover, what do most of us care about what foreigners think? Was it not Dr. Johnson who said, "All foreigners are mostly fools"?[38-1]

As Pan-Angles we are, in short, the cream of the earth. As Britishers, Americans or Australians we are the cream of the cream. As Englanders, Missourians, or Queenslanders we are something even more superlative. As Londoners, St. Louisans, or Brisbanians,--words fail to express the height of our self-approval. The Englander says little on the subject but, like the calm ungainsayable fog of his habitat, simply is. If called from his high estate to pass judgment, he characterizes the rest of the world as "beastly peculiar." "Colonials," in this term he lumps also the inhabitants of the United States, are to him unfortunates, having "jolly rotten luck to live way off out there." The American, more nervously pitched, raises his voice and talks long about his bigness. "You call that a river?" he indicates the Thames. "Why, if we had a damp streak like that in one of our fields in Iowa, we'd tile it just to keep from getting our feet wet crossing." The Australian, conscious that little attention has been paid him as yet, and conscious too that his "potentialities" are really great, {39} aggressively balances a chip for the inspection of critics. His sheep, his harbour, his apples, his stars--woe to anyone who fails to acquiesce in their paramount excellence! "And after all," he sighs, returned from the other fair places of the earth, "after all, there is only one Sydney."

Such are our local prides, or such at least do they appear in their most blatant types. "The habit of brag runs through all classes"[39-1] wherever we live. Those of us who observe the good form of appearing tolerably meek-minded, are perhaps at heart no more so. Why, then, do we smile tolerantly at all the world and take no offence at each other. Because each is confident of his own place in the sun, and confident too that the Pan-Angles, although he may not use that term, by virtue of these very local prides, are one in their desire and determination to maintain their civilization against all others who are not of our language and our ways.

An American was one day asked by a cutlery salesman from Birmingham (England), "Are you not humiliated by having no national language?" "We have one," was the prompt reply; "it is English." So would have spoken a Canadian or a Newfoundlander, a South African, a New Zealander, or an Australian. That is one of our prides. Our language is ours. It reflects our many-rooted origins, our varied and severally branched histories, our constantly converging growths. It binds us to the ideals of our kind. Its very name takes us in imagination to the infancy of our race, where {40} from subservience to the wills of others the individual emerged. "The English have given importance to individuals, a principal end and fruit of every society. Every man is allowed and encouraged to be what he is, and is guarded in the indulgence of his whim. 'Magna Charta,' said Rushworth, 'is such a fellow that he will have no sovereign.' By this general activity and by this sacredness of individuals, they have in seven hundred years evolved the principles of freedom. It is the land of patriots, martyrs, sages and bards, and if the ocean out of which it emerged should wash it away, it will be remembered as an island famous for immortal laws, for the announcement of original right which make the stone tables of liberty."[40-1] To acknowledge the relation of America to the land of these struggles and their earliest successes can never be humiliating. England's past belongs to us all, and to-day England is one of us. There, was cradled the individualism of our Teuton forbears that has grown into a civilizing world-wide domination. We all have helped to nurture and shield it. We are as seven guardians whose harmony is secured not only because they are one in aim and method but because being one in language they are bound into understanding.

The Pan-Angle enjoys the highest standard of living known to any comparable number of people in the world, either formerly or to-day. If civilization depends on the margin of wealth above mere {41} means of existence, Pan-Angles are the most civilized of the races.

Given a hypothetical community possessed only of such material resources that all the energies of every member must be used to provide food and protection from the elements, and there is presented the lowest possible standard of living. Anything lower would mean starvation, exposure, and death. Add but ever so little to those resources, so that some few, still fed and sheltered, may employ their energies in other ways, and they may become scientists and prolong the lives of their fellows and teach them more productive methods of food getting; they may become artists and poets for the delight and recreation of the rest; they may devise laws and systems of government to regulate labour and control wealth; and may develop certain instinctive cravings into hopeful religions. The community has now taken its first steps toward what we call civilization. Add further to the resources, increase the amount of energy that can be spent in channels other than the maintenance of life, and there is developed a complex organism, with churches and schools, music and literature, steam transportation, electric machinery, and contrivances of many other sorts to make life comfortable, enjoyable, and inspiring. Between this hypothetical primitive community and civilization as the Pan-Angles understand it are many stages, some of them occupied to-day by our neighbours whose material resources have not increased to the extent of ours. Now, of all the world, the people having most time and strength {42} after their physical necessities are secured are the Pan-Angles.

The per capita wealth and the per capita land holdings of the Pan-Angles are greater than those of any other comparable number of people. Their diet is more generous, more costly, and more varied. Their apparel is more expensive, and their housing more capacious and more comfortable. They are able to support a greater number of instructors and entertainers in their writers, artists, and musicians. Hardly an act of their lives, hardly an article they use, but has some embellishment not strictly necessary to life and utility. With all this the Pan-Angles, so much have they beyond the mere means of existence, furnish lavishly the pleasures of the so-called "higher life" to their own souls. They study philosophies and ponder the rights of man; they support the weak and economically useless with the proceeds of their own labour. They send of their wealth to other civilizations, as missionary reports testify, trying to contribute to their welfare. And with all this spending, they still have at their disposal such resources that they increase in numbers from generation to generation, and each generation has more than the generation before.

The reason for this high standard of living is not far to seek. We have all this because we have been strong enough to take land, the source of food and shelter, the basis of all life and wealth. The Teutons came and took England; the Normans came and took England; and Pan-Angles since have taken land in every continent and throughout the seas: from the bleak coast {43} and rich shore-fisheries of the Labrador to the fertile plains of the Missouri and the grassy ranges of Otago. In Canada and the United States for years land was the prize that the country offered to pioneers, giving thousands of acres in parcels of one hundred and sixty as long as they lasted. From their land and sea-coast holdings, the Pan-Angles have taken the yield of fish and grain and meat; and those who laboured in getting food produced enough for themselves and for their fellows who were working in other ways. Besides food, these lands provided many other of the essentials of the standard of living we desire.

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.

{47}

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.

King John in 1213 bids "discreet men" from each shire come to Oxford,[56-3] and his son Henry III. in 1254 issues a writ requiring "to cause to come before the King's Council two good and discreet Knights of the Shire, whom the men of the county {57} shall have chosen for this purpose in the stead of all and of each of them, to consider along with the knights of other shires what aid they will grant the king."[57-1] In a similar writ of 1295 the term "to be elected" is first used instead of the less specific instruction "chosen."[57-2] The word representative, to describe such a person "chosen" or "elected" "with full and sufficient power _for themselves and for the community_"[57-3] was not yet in use. It appears in print in Cromwell's time,[57-4] and was then possibly new political jargon.

The council so composed developed into the British Parliament, that name coming into use for it in 1275.[57-5] With the king it was for years the law-making power of the British Isles. The peers held their seats in the House of Lords by personal right, as did the wise men of the Witenagamot.[57-6] They acted on their own account, and were responsible to no one. The members of the House of Commons held their seats by no personal right, but as representatives of a large body of commoners {58} who could not all attend. They were chosen for this purpose, and derived authority from the people who employed them. The king in his own right gave or withheld his sanction to the measures agreed upon by the two houses. It followed that the king and peers had no vote for representatives in Parliament, as, being present to act for themselves, they needed none.

The character of the law-making power has gradually altered. Since the days of Queen Anne no sovereign has attempted to veto a bill passed by Parliament.[58-1] Since 1834 no sovereign has dismissed a ministry,[58-2] nor has he formed one,[58-3] and the ministry has come to be responsible to the representative branch of Parliament alone. From 1835 to 1911 the presentative branch was purely a revising chamber.[58-4] Since 1911 it has been permitted to delay only, but not to prevent, the passing of a law desired by the representative branch, Parliament becoming thus in essence unicameral. The king and the lords hold positions of great historical and sentimental value; their personal influence may be as great as they can make it. The House of Commons, however, is now the sole power of legislation in the British Isles. It is hence fair to say that the presentative element is negligible in the national government of the British Isles.

Across the Atlantic went the developing political structures of the Pan-Angles. The colonists, in the simplicity of their social organization, approached early Teuton conditions. They {59} had the benefit, however, of all the experience the race had accumulated since that time. In New England from the earliest settlement till to-day the town meeting has been at the basis of government. It is the folk moot flourishing in new soil, and with the House of Lords (as it existed till 1911) could claim descent from the presentative government of our political forbears in the German forests. Of Virginia it is written that in "1619 a House of Assembly 'broke out' in the colony . . . then just twelve years old. In that Assembly we see the _first-born child of the British Parliament_, the eldest brother, so to speak, of the legislatures of the United States and of the English colonies of to-day. This Assembly was composed of a council and a body of twenty-two representatives from the eleven plantations, elected by the freeholders, imposing taxes and passing laws, meeting either annually or at frequent intervals."[59-1] In this manner were our notions of representative government transplanted.

A representative is not necessarily chosen by the people he represents.[59-2] In the early parliamentary days he often was not, but was arbitrarily appointed by the king. Since then the people have taken upon themselves the right of designating who is to represent them, and an increasingly large number of any given community has gained participation in that right. In some cases the people have arranged to make their choice indirectly. An example is the election prior to 1913 of United States senators by the people of the {60} state, but through the state legislature; another, is the appointment of the upper house, as in New Zealand, by the elected members of the lower house. But as evidence of the people's wish to keep control over their representatives, one may note the agitation for direct election in both these cases, and the virtual direct election of senators in some states of the United States, even before the Seventeenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States came into force in 1913.[60-1]

There are certain difficulties attendant upon representation. The agent may fail truly to represent, and the Pan-Angle people are constantly seeking to devise and perfect methods of minimizing this difficulty. One means toward that end has been sets of written instructions called constitutions,[60-2] adopted by the people and set over their representatives. The written Constitution of the United States and those of its original thirteen states were early edicts of the people restricting the power of the people's representatives. In the political talk of our times we find persistently recurring the words initiative, referendum, and recall.[60-3] What success will attend the movements for which they stand, movements which merely extend or return to ancient practices, it is too early to say. But the thing that is plain is that these are all efforts of the people to exercise their right to govern themselves presentatively, because they {61} think representation in present practice not entirely satisfactory.

Once presentative government over even a comparatively small area was impracticable because of the time necessary to cover distances. Now the results of an election involving millions of voters and extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific can be known a few hours after the closing of the polls. Burke thought the two months' sailing between Great Britain and America an insuperable obstacle to joint representation, although Franklin and Pownall disagreed with him.[61-1] Such is our speed of travel to-day that representatives from every Pan-Angle nation could reach North America in less than a month. Not only that, but thanks to electricity, a referendum could be held all over the Pan-Angle countries to-day as successfully as the town meeting was held a hundred years ago. And the decisions it reached would be known throughout the world in a fraction of the time that was needed for the deliberations of the Witan to reach the outskirts of the kingdom.

In what proportion the governments of the seven nations are presentative and in what proportion representative, it would be difficult to tell. Easy it is, however, to recognize these forms everywhere. Whether it is the adult population of New Zealand balloting on national prohibition; the men of a New England town meeting voting its school appropriation; or the members of the House of Lords discussing federation within the British Isles--we have a purely presentative bit of {62} governing. If it is the representatives of an Australian state voting on a minimum wage bill; the members of the British House of Commons passing a compulsory insurance act; or those of a Canadian provincial legislative assembly voting to exclude Asiatics, the principle is identical. Government in these cases is representative.

The tendency is towards an increase in the presentative element, as is evidenced by growing popular control. Not only our laws but our forms of government show this. The Pan-Angle notion of an executive at the time the first colonies were forming was drawn from a kingship which then meant a permanent tenure of office. The president of the United States who holds office for a fixed length of time was created after that model. He represents, but once elected cannot be recalled.[62-1] In the British Isles changes have come about, and the prime minister who now wields executive power can be recalled any day by the people speaking indirectly through their representatives, popular opinion swaying his party adherents to relinquish their efforts in his support.[62-1] In this respect the British Isles organization has proved more sensitive than the American to the spirit of the times.[62-2]

In our governments various individuals and classes, or what would in modern days be called "interests," struggle for supremacy. When a minority is successful we dub it aristocracy or privilege. At one time the king was the privileged minority. In 1215 the barons attacked the {63} privilege of this minority; the king asked to have the matter arbitrated by a third party. The barons, who apparently understood something about arbitration, refused. They also refused to give any assurance of their own good behaviour; Magna Carta was a check on the king only. Moreover "Magna Carta can hardly be said to have introduced any new ideas. As Pollock and Maitland (_History of English Law_) say 'on the whole the charter contains little that is absolutely new. It is restorative.'" [63-1] Since then many aristocrats have enjoyed special privileges: certain churches, certain forms of industry, holders of certain kinds of property. Against all these in turn the levelling force of democracy has been hurled. It can be said in general that we are travelling, though with a wise conservatism, away from the aristocratic to the democratic, by which is meant that privileges are becoming more seldom to the few and power more usual to the many. Democracy, it seems likely, is to be our common future. But, in the meanwhile, the present stage of all our governments may truly be said to be representative action with presentative sanction.

Allied to the question of government is that of suffrage. While all are subject to the government {64} of the land, only some take active part in determining what it shall be. And here, again, the individualism of the Pan-Angles is an insistent factor. Voters, whether so presentatively or representatively, have been in our past one of the privileged minorities--all individuals reckoned. They are so still. But by constantly receiving into their ranks bodies of newly enfranchised persons, they bid fair to become the majority. Social, religious, property, and educational disqualifications long kept many men from the suffrage. Many of these disabilities have been abandoned, some in all places, others in some places only. Sex alone has kept many from voting. This disqualification has been in places and in some respects removed. Whatever one may believe as to the wisdom of entrusting the ballot to the few or to the many, it has long seemed evident that the race was advancing toward universal adult male suffrage. Now many would say instead that the goal is universal adult suffrage.

On our respective paths toward this goal our various electoral units mark various stages of progress. Identical voting qualifications may be found half a world apart, while neighbouring groups differ. No two probably agree in every slight detail, though the range of dissimilarity is narrow. Certain property and educational tests are not infrequent, especially in the older Pan-Angle organizations. The newer ones, as a rule, are the more democratic. Women hold suffrage privileges in at least some respects very extensively, the newer communities again being more liberal in this. Plural voting obtains in the British Isles. {65} These local differences produce no confusion, but keep our progress orderly.

Of the United States it has been said, "There is a great advantage in having different State governments try different experiments in the enactment of laws and in governmental policies, so that a State less prone to accept novel and untried remedies may await their development by States more enterprising and more courageous. The end is that the diversity of opinion in State governments enforces a wise deliberation and creates a _locus poenitentiae_ which may constitute the salvation of the Republic."[65-1] Equally might this have been stated of the effect of the diversity of opinion in the Pan-Angle units on the progress of the whole civilization.

In no regard more than in the question of suffrage, is seen the value and need of local option. It permits progress in whatever respect progress is possible, and prevents the misfortunes that accompany attempts to force progress where the time and conditions are not ripe for it. Through the exercise of local option the suffrage has been constantly extended, a bit here and a bit there, throughout Pan-Angle countries without seriously affecting our political stability. Any attendant shock is confined within narrow boundaries.[65-2] If Texas and Vermont, Tasmania and South Australia, Transvaal and Cape Province have different suffrage {66} requirements, it is because they differ in history and composition and hence in needs. The desires of their inhabitants could not be satisfied by a single law. To seek to establish one would be to estrange all and satisfy none.

The question of negro suffrage is in point. The northern states of America, where the negroes were comparatively few and were to some degree at least educated, felt favourably toward negro suffrage. After the Civil War the northern voters, acting through the central government, were able to give the vote to the negro, not only within their own borders but throughout the country. The results were most unfortunate. The Pan-Angle population of the southern states thereby lost their local autonomy. The men most fit to govern in these states were forced in self-defence to become law-breakers. It took many years to undo the mistake and re-establish there the will of the Pan-Angle community. Through the intelligence of the South in framing legislation, and the forbearance of the North in not overriding this legislation, it is now adequately accomplished. "Hitherto, no amount of legal ingenuity has sufficed to extract from the United States supreme court a direct, straightforward decision on the constitutionality of the 'grandfather' clauses in the election laws of many states, whereby the Negro voters have been disfranchised. The court has invariably disposed of cases designed to test the constitutionality of such laws on technical grounds."[66-1] South Africa, when the subject arose in Constitutional Convention, {67} was wiser. No part overruled another part. "In respect of the admission, of natives to the parliamentary franchise the practice of the Cape Colony was in direct conflict with that of the remaining colonies. As no agreement on the question of the admission or non-admission of natives to the Union franchise could be reached, the Convention decided that the franchise qualifications existing in the several colonies should stand as the franchise qualifications for the Union Parliament in the respective provinces of the Union. As the result of this compromise, while the native voters in the Cape Province obtained the Union franchise, practically no natives were admitted to this privilege in the remaining three provinces."[67-1] With certain temporary limitations, provision is made for the elimination of the vote of the coloured inhabitants of Cape Province.[67-2] It is now generally acknowledged that no community of Pan-Angles is to be forced to accept as voters those whom it considers non-assimilable.

Our law, like our language, has flowed from many sources and has been subjected to foreign influence. The colonists carried out with them the English common law, the sources of which "have been stated to be 'as undiscoverable as those of the Nile.'"[67-3] Quite different from this is the common law of Scotland, "based on the principles {68} of the Roman Civil and Canon law as applied and modified by a long series of statutes of the Scots Parliament and decisions of the Scottish courts. . . . A detailed comparison of the differences between the private law of England and Scotland would involve a survey of the whole domain of jurisprudence and would be the work of a lifetime;"[68-1] From 1642 to 1652 occurred the English Civil War, followed by the Commonwealth. In those stormy years which seem, as writes an Australian jurist, "to have anticipated almost every effort of modern political thought, scarcely any cry was more persistently raised by the reform party than the cry for reform of the law. It was the first great period of conscious law reform."[68-2] All the Pan-Angle nations, save only the British Isles and Newfoundland, had the stress of that period reflected in the history of their settlements, or were founded after the results of that war had been produced.

In the new countries the legal influence was predominantly British, but in some parts the colonists encountered communities of Europeans of other civilizations and of other legal theories. In Quebec and Louisiana they met French law; in western United States, Spanish; and in South Africa, a form of Roman-Dutch. Being elements in civilizations which only gradually have blended into that of the Pan-Angles, these laws have in greater or less measure survived. But in such {69} localities slowly the foreign law merges into that of the local Pan-Angles. As an example we have South Africa: "The local Dutch statute law was abandoned perforce as obsolescent, and replaced almost entirely by local enactments based upon the existing circumstances of the colony or founded upon English statutes, and the Roman-Dutch common law, broadly speaking, came to be administered concurrently with English common law. Nor was it surprising that, with judges and advocates alike versed in the decisions and practice of the English Courts, English principles were more and more closely woven into the fabric of the Colonial law. And apart from the influence of the 'case-law,' thus built up through the Colonial Reports, circumstances--or rather its greater capacity to satisfy the conditions of modern life--gave the regulation of the field of commercial intercourse almost exclusively to English law."[69-1] A like story might be told of French law in Louisiana. In other instances, where perhaps it receives no official recognition, non-English law has doubtless had its effect on what may be loosely called Pan-Angle law. As long as it suits the people and their needs better, so long a law exists regardless of its origin. But experience shows that the law of any Pan-Angle nation tends to conform to the practices of our whole civilization.