The Evolution of an Empire: A Brief Historical Sketch of England Part 11

[Sidenote: First World's Fair, 1851.]

In 1851 the Prince Consort conceived the idea of a great Exposition, which should under one roof gather all the fruits of this marvellous advance, and Sydenham Palace, a gigantic structure of gla.s.s and iron, was erected.

In literature, Tennyson was preserving English valor in immortal verse.

Thackeray and d.i.c.kens, in prose as immortal, were picturing the social lights and shadows of the Victorian Age.

[Sidenote: Death of Prince Albert, 1861.]

In 1861 a crushing blow fell upon the Queen in the death of the Prince Consort. America treasures kindly memory of Prince Albert, on account of his outspoken friendship in the hour of her need. During the war of the Rebellion, while the fate of our country seemed hanging in the balance, we had few friends in England, where people seemed to look with satisfaction upon our probable dismemberment.

We are not likely to forget the three shining exceptions:--Prince Albert--John Bright--and John Stuart Mill.

[Sidenote: Suez Ca.n.a.l.]

It was while that astute diplomatist, Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield) was Prime Minister, that French money, skill and labor opened up the waterway between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. It would never do to have France command such a strategic point on the way to the East.

England was alert. She lost not a moment. The impecunious Khedive was offered by telegraph $20,000,000 for his interest in the Suez Ca.n.a.l, nearly one-half of the whole capital stock. The offer was accepted with no less alacrity than it was made. So with the Arabian Port of Aden, which she already possessed, and with a strong enough financial grasp upon impoverished Egypt to secure the right of way, should she need it, England had made the Ca.n.a.l which France dug, practically her own.

[Sidenote: Victoria Crowned Empress of India, 1876]

Lord Beaconsfield had crowned his dramatic and picturesque Ministerial career by placing a new diadem on the head of the widowed Queen, who was now Empress of India. His successor, William Ewart Gladstone, the great leader of the Liberal party, was content with a less showy field.

He had in 1869 relieved Ireland from the unjust burden of supporting a Church the tenets of which she considered blasphemous; and one which her own, the Roman Catholic, had for three centuries been trying to overthrow. We cannot wonder that the memory of a tyranny so odious is not easily effaced; nor that there is less grat.i.tude for its removal, than bitterness that it should so long have been.

[Sidenote: Disestablishment of Irish Branch of Church of England, 1869.]

The disestablishment of the English Church in Ireland was one of the most righteous acts of this reign. Whether the great English Statesman will be equally successful in securing Home Rule for that unhappy land, upon which he has staked the final effort of his life, remains to be seen.

The Irish question is such a tangled web of wrong and injustice complicated by folly and outrage, that the wisest and best-intentioned statesmanship is baffled. Whether the conditions would be improved by giving them their own Parliament, can only be determined by experiment; and that experiment England is not yet willing to try.

History affords few spectacles of its kind more impressive than Mr.

Gladstone at 86, with the ardor and energy of youth, battling for a measure he believes so vitally necessary to the Nation. It is a pity that for Americans his greatness is tarnished and belief in the infallibility of his judgment shaken, by the memory that he upheld the attack upon our National life in 1860; and that he, seemingly without regret, prophesied our downfall.

The work of Parliamentary reform commenced in 1832 has moved steadily on through this reign. By successive acts the franchise has extended farther and farther, until a final limit is almost reached; and side by side with this has been a corresponding increase in educational facilities, "because," as a Peer cynically remarked, "we must educate our Masters!"

So many reforms have been accomplished during this reign, the time seems not far distant when there will be little more for Liberals to urge, or for Conservatives and the House of Lords to obstruct. Monarchy is absolutely shorn of its dangers. The House of Commons, which is the actual ruling power of the Kingdom, is only the expression of the popular will.

We are accustomed to regard American freedom as the one supreme type.

But it is not. The popular will in England reaches the springs of Government more freely, more swiftly, and more imperiously, than it does in Republican America. It comes as a stern mandate, which must be obeyed on the instant. The Queen of England has less power than the President of the United States. He can form a definite policy, select his own Ministry to carry it out, and to some extent have his own way for four years, whether the people like it or not. The Queen cannot do this for a day. Her Ministry cannot stand an hour, with a policy disapproved by the Commons. Not since Anne has a sovereign refused signature to an Act of Parliament. The Georges, and William IV., continued to exercise the power of dismissing Ministers at their pleasure. But since Victoria, an unwritten law forbids it, and with this vanishes the last _remnant of a personal Government_. The end long sought is attained.

The history of no other people affords such an ill.u.s.tration of a steadily progressive national development from seed to blossom, compelled by one persistent force. Freedom in England has not been wrought by cataclysm as in France, but has unfolded like a plant from a life within; impeded and arrested sometimes, but patiently biding its time, and then steadily and irresistibly pressing outward; one leaf after another freeing itself from the detaining force. Only a few more remain to be unclosed, and we shall behold the consummate flower of fourteen centuries;--centuries in which the most practical nation in the world has steadily pursued an _ideal_! The ideal of individual freedom subordinated only to the good of the whole.

The triumph of England has been the triumph not of genius, nor of intellect, but of _character_. It is those cross-threads of stubborn homely traits, the tenacity of purpose, the reluctance to change, the adherence to habit, usage and tradition, which have toughened the fabric almost to indestructibility. These traits are ill.u.s.trated in the persistence of the hereditary principle in the royal line. We look in vain for another such instance. The blood of Cerdic, the first Saxon "Ealdorman" (495), flows in the veins of Victoria. She is 38th remove from Egbert, first Saxon King of consolidated England (802), 26th from William the Conqueror (1066), and 9th in descent from that picturesque and lovely criminal, Mary Stuart (1587). There have been wars, and foreign invasions,--a Danish and a Norman conquest, the overturning of dynasties, and Revolutions, and a "Protectorate," and yet--there sits upon the throne to-day a Queen descended by unbroken line from Cerdic the Saxon!

Queen Victoria is undoubtedly indebted to the wise counsel and guidance of the Prince Consort in the early decades of her reign. Not one act of folly has marred its even current. She has held up to the nation a high ideal of wifehood, motherhood, and of domestic virtue. None of her predecessors have bound their people to them with ties so human, her griefs and experiences moving them as their own. We think of her more as an exalted type of Woman, than as Sovereign of the most marvellous Empire the World ever saw;--its area three times that of Europe, representing every zone, all products, and every race!

How long England will be capable of sending out a vital current sufficient to nourish such distant extremities none can tell; or whether the far-off Colonies of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand will increase their independent life, until they become detached Sovereignties like the United States. If that day ever comes, like the Mother of a generation of grown children, with independent homes of their own,--England will sit with folded hands, her life-work done.

Let no American forget, that England before the Restoration is as much our England as theirs. That the memories of Crecy, of Blenheim, of Marston Moor and Naseby, are our great inheritance too. That Chaucer, Milton, Shakespeare, belong to the humblest American as much as to Victoria.

The branch has grown far from the parent tree since the 17th Century; and the England of Tennyson and Herbert Spencer is only a very distant cousin. She has not always treated us well, has not been chary of criticism, nor prodigal of praise, nor did she sympathize with us in the day of our peril and misfortune. But for all that--sharing the same great heritage of race and of literature, speaking in the same language the same thoughts and impulses, there must always exist between us a tie, such as can bind us to no other nation upon the earth.