The Evolution of States Part 43

[Footnote 973: This is very trenchantly set forth in one of the writings of the Marquis of Pombal, given by Carnota in his memoir, pp. 75-77.

Pombal was on this head evidently a disciple of the French physiocrats, or of Montesquieu, who lucidly embodies their doctrines on money (_Esprit des Lois_, 1748, xxi, 22; xxii, 1 _sq._). On the general question of the impoverishment of Portugal by her American gold and silver mines, cp. Carnota pp. 4, 72-73, 207.]

[Footnote 974: This has been repeatedly suggested. See the pamphlet of Guilherme J.C. Henriquez (W.J. C. Henry) on _Portugal_, 1880.]

[Footnote 975: This had been several times proposed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Rio-Branco, p. 154).]

[Footnote 976: Rio-Branco, p. 163.]

[Footnote 977: Cp. Rio-Branco, _Esquisse_, as cited, p. 151.]

[Footnote 978: F.J. de Santa-Anna Nery, "Travail servile et travail libre," in vol. _Bresil en 1889_, pp. 205, 206; E. da Silva-Prado, "Immigration," ch. xvi of same compilation, pp. 489, 490.]

[Footnote 979: Rio-Branco, p. 186, _note_.]

[Footnote 980: From 1857 to 1871, the fifteen years preceding the process of emanc.i.p.ation, the total immigration was only 170,000. From 1873 to 1887 it amounted to 400,000, and it has since much increased.

Cp. Santa-Anna Nery, as cited, p. 212; and E. da Silva-Prado, "Immigration" as cited, pp. 489-91.]

[Footnote 981: It is interesting to note that whereas he was, for a king, an accomplished and enlightened philosopher, of the theistic school of Coleridge, the revolutionist movement was made by the Brazilian school of Positivists. It would be hard to find a revolution in which both sides stood at so high an intellectual level.]

[Footnote 982: See, in _Bresil en 1889_, the remarks of M. da Silva-Prado, p. 559.]

[Footnote 983: See the section (ch. iii) on "Climatologie," by Henri Morize, in _Bresil en 1889_; in particular the section on "Immigration"

(ch. xvi) by E. da Silva-Prado, pp. 503-505.]

[Footnote 984: See, in the same volume, the section (ch. xviii) on "L'Art," by da Silva-Prado. He shows that "Le Bresilien a la preoccupation de la beaute" (p. 556).]

[Footnote 985: The probabilities appear to be specially in favour of music, to which the native races and the negroes alike show a great predilection (_id._ pp. 545, 546). As M. da Silva-Prado urges, what is needed is a systematic home-instruction, as liberally carried out as was Pedro's policy of sending promising students of the arts to Europe. Thus far, though education is good, books have been relatively scarce because of their dearness. Here again the United States had an immense preliminary advantage in their ability to reproduce at low prices the works of English authors, paying nothing to the writers; a state of things which subsisted long after the States had produced great writers of their own.]

[Footnote 986: In Portugal, "by a law enacted in 1844, primary education is compulsory; but only a small fraction of the children of the lower cla.s.ses really attend school" (_Statesman's Year-Book_). In Brazil there has been great educational progress in recent years; and in 1911 a decree was issued for the reform of the school system, a Board of Education being established with control over all the schools. Education is still non-compulsory.]

PART VI

ENGLISH HISTORY DOWN TO THE CONSt.i.tUTIONAL PERIOD

CHAPTER I

BEFORE THE GREAT REBELLION

It is after the great Civil War that English political development becomes most directly instructive, because it is thenceforward that the modern political conditions begin to be directly traceable.

Const.i.tutional or parliamentary monarchy takes at that point a virtually new departure. But we shall be better prepared to follow the play of the forces of attraction and repulsion, union and strife, in the modern period, if we first realise how in the ages of feudal monarchy and personal monarchy, as the previous periods have been conveniently named, the same fundamental forces were at work in different channels. The further we follow these forces back the better we are prepared to conceive political movement in terms of naturalist as opposed to verbalist formulas. Above all things, we must get rid of the habit of explaining each phenomenon in terms of the abstraction of itself--as Puritanism by "the Puritan spirit," Christian civilisation by "Christianity," and English history by "the English character." We are to look for the causation of the Puritan spirit and English conduct and the religion of the hour in the interplay of general instincts and particular circ.u.mstances.

-- 1

At the very outset, the conventional views as to the bias of the "Anglo-Saxon race"[987] are seen on the least scrutiny to be excluded by the facts. Credited with an innate bent to seafaring, the early English are found to have virtually abandoned the sea after settling in England;[988] the new conditions altering the sea-going bent just as the older had made it, and continued to do in the case of the Scandinavians.

Credited in the same fashion with a racial bias to commerce, they are found to have been uncommercial, unadventurous, home-staying; and it took centuries of continental influences to make them otherwise. Up to the fourteenth century "almost the whole of English trade was in the hands of aliens."[989] And of what trade the "free" Anglo-Saxons did conduct, the most important branch seems to have been the slave trade.[990] As to the ma.s.s of the population, whatever were their actual life-conditions--and as to this we have very little knowledge--they were certainly not the "free barbarians" of the old Teutonic legend. Unfree in some sense they mostly were; and all that we have seen of the early evolution of Greece and Rome goes to suggest that their status was essentially depressed. In the words of a close student, English economic history "begins with the serfdom of the ma.s.ses of the rural population under Saxon rule--a serfdom from which it has taken a thousand years of English economic evolution to set them free."[991] This is perhaps an over-statement: serfdom suggests general predial slavery; and this cannot be shown to have existed. But those who repel the proposition seem to take no account of the _tendency_ towards popular depression in early settled communities.[992] If we stand by the terminology of Domesday Book, we are far indeed from the conception of a population of freemen.

That the ma.s.s of the "Saxon" English (who included many of non-Saxon descent) were more or less "unfree" is a conclusion repeatedly reached on different lines of research. Long ago, the popular historian Sharon Turner wrote that "There can be no doubt that nearly three-fourths of the Anglo-Saxon population were in a state of slavery" (_History of the Anglo-Saxons_, 4th ed. 1823, iii, 255); and he is here supported by his adversary Dunham (_Europe during the Middle Ages_, Cab. Cyc. 1834, iii, 49-52).

J.M. Kemble later admitted that the "whole population in some districts were unfree" (_The Saxons in England_, reprint, 1876, i, 189). Yet another careful student sums up that "at the time of the Conquest we find the larger portion of the inhabitants of England in a state of villenage" (J.F. Morgan, _England under the Normans_, 1858, p. 61). (The interesting question of the racial elements of the population at and after the Conquest is fully discussed by the Rev. Geoffrey Hill, _Some Consequences of the Norman Conquest_, 1904, ch. i.)

Later and closer research does but indicate gradations in the status of the unfree--gradations which seem to have varied arbitrarily in terms of local law. (On this, however, see Morgan, p. 62.) The Domesday Book specifies mult.i.tudes of _villani_, _servi_, _bordarii_ (or _cotarii_), as well as (occasionally) large numbers of _sochmanni_, and _liberi homines_. In Cornwall there were only six chief proprietors, with 1,738 _villani_, 2,441 _bordarii_, and 1,148 _servi_; in Devonshire, 8,246 _villani_, 4,814 _bordarii_, and 3,210 _servi_; in Gloucestershire, 3,071 _villani_, 1,701 _bordarii_, and 2,423 _servi_; while in Lincolnshire there were 11,322 _sochmanni_, 7,168 _villani_, 3,737 _bordarii_; and in Norfolk 4,528 _villani_, 8,679 _bordarii_, 1,066 _servi_, 5,521 _sochmanni_, and 4,981 _liberi homines_. (Cp. Sharon Turner, as cited, vol. iii, bk. viii, ch. 9.) Thus the largest numbers of ostensible freemen are found in the lately settled Danish districts, and the largest number of slaves where most of the old British population survived (Ashley, _Economic History_, 1888, i, 17, 18; Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, 1891, i, 88). "The eastern counties are the home of liberty" (Maitland, _Domesday Book and Beyond_, p. 23). The main totals are: _bordarii_, 82,119; _villani_, 108,407; _servi_, 25,156; that is, 215,000 heads of families, roughly speaking, all of whom were more or less "unfree," out of an entire enumerated male population of 300,000.

The constant tendency was to reduce all shades to one of _nativi_ or born villeins (Stubbs, _Const.i.tutional History_, 4th ed. i, 465); that is to say, the number of absolute serfs tends to lessen, their status being gradually improved, while higher grades tend to be somewhat lowered. Prof. Vinogradoff's research, which aims at correcting Mr. Seebohm's, does but disclose that villenage in general had three aspects:--"Legal theory and political disabilities would fain make it all but slavery; the manorial system ensures it something of the character of the Roman _colonatus_; there is a stock of freedom in it which speaks of Saxon tradition" (_Villainage in England_, 1892, p. 137; cp.

Seebohm, as cited, p. 409; and Stubbs, -- 132, i, 462-65). Even the comparatively "free" socmen were tied to the land and were not independent yeomen (Ashley, i, 19); and even "freedmen" were often tied to a specified service by the act of manumission (Dunham, as cited, iii, 51). As to Teutonic slavery in general, cp. C.-F.

Allen, _Histoire de Danemark_, French tr. 1878, i, 41-44, and U.R.

Burke, _History of Spain_, Hume's ed. 1900, i, 116; as to France, cp. Guizot, _Essais sur l'Histoire de France_, edit. 1847, pp.

162-72; _Histoire de la civilisation en France_, 13e edit. iii, 172, 190-203; and as to the Netherlands, see above, pp. 295-96.

There is a tendency on the one hand to exaggerate the significance of the data, as when we identify the lot of an ancient serf or villein with that of a negro in the United States of sixty years ago;[993] and on the other hand to forget, in familiarity with scholarly research, the inevitable moral bearing of all degrees of bondage. The _villa.n.u.s_ "both is and is not a free man"; but the "not" is none the less morally significant: "though he may be _liber h.o.m.o_, he is not _francus_";[994]

and his name carries a slur. An immeasurable amount of moral history is conveyed in the simple fact that "slave" was always a term of abuse; that "villain" is just "villein"; that "caitiff" is just "captive"; and that "churl" is just "ceorl." So the "neif" (= _naf_ = native) becomes the "knave";[995] the "scullion" the "blackguard"; and the homeless wanderer the "vagabond"; even as for the Roman "the guest," _hostis_, was "the enemy." The "rogue" has doubtless a similar descent, and "rogue and peasant-slave" in Tudor times, when slavery had ceased, stood for all things contemptible. Men degrade and impoverish their fellows, and out of the created fact of deprivation make their worst aspersions; never asking who or what it is that thus turns human beings into scullions, churls, blackguards, knaves, caitiffs, rogues, and villains.

The Greeks knew that a man enslaved was a man demoralised; but saw in the knowledge no motive for change of social tactics. Still less did the Saxons; for their manumissions at the bidding of the priest were but penitential acts, in no way altering the general drift of things.

Green (_Short History_, ch. i, -- 6, ed. 1881, pp. 54, 55), laying stress on the manumissions, a.s.serts that under Edgar "slavery was gradually disappearing before the efforts of the Church." But this is going far beyond the evidence. Green seems to have a.s.sumed that the laws framed by Dunstan were efficacious; but they clearly were not. (Cp. C. Edmond Maurice, _Tyler, Bale, and Oldcastle_, 1875, pp. 14-18.) Kemble rightly notes--here going deeper than Prof.

Vinogradoff--that there was a constant process of new slave-making (_Saxons_, i, 183-84; cp. Maitland, p. 31); and in particular notes how "the honours and security of service became more anxiously desired than a needy and unsafe freedom" (p. 184). There is in short a law of worsenment in a crude polity as in an advanced one. Green himself says of the slave cla.s.s that it "sprang mainly from debt or crime" (_The Making of England_, 1885, p. 192; cp.

_Short History_, p. 13). But debt and "crime" were always arising.

Compare his admissions in _The Conquest of England_, 2nd ed. pp.

444, 445. Elsewhere he admits that slaves were multiplied by the mutual wars of the Saxons (p. 13); and Kemble, recognising "crime"

as an important factor, agrees (i, 186) with Eichhorn and Grimm in seeing in war and conquest the "princ.i.p.al and original cause of slavery in all its branches." A battle would make more slaves in a day than were manumitted in a year. Some slaves indeed, as in the Roman Empire, were able to buy their freedom (Maurice, as cited, p.

20, and refs.; Dunham, as cited, iii, 51); but there can have been few such cases. (Cp. C.-F. Allen, _Histoire de Danemark_, French tr. i, 41-44, as to the general tendencies of Teutonic slavery.) The clergy for a time promoted enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, and even set an example in order to widen their own basis of power; but as Green later notes (ch. v, -- 4, p. 239) the Church in the end promoted "emanc.i.p.ation, as a work of piety, on all estates but its own."

Green further makes the vital admission that "the decrease of slavery was more than compensated by the increasing degradation of the bulk of the people.... Religion had told against political independence"--for the Church played into the hands of the king.

During the Danish invasions, which involved heavy taxation (_Danegeld_) to buy off the invaders, slavery increased and worsened; and c.n.u.t's repet.i.tion of the old laws against the foreign slave trade can have availed little (Maurice, as cited, pp. 23-24).

Prof. Abdy, after recognising that before the Conquest English liberties were disappearing like those of France (_Lectures on Feudalism_, 1890, pp. 322, 326-27, 331), argues that, though the tenure of the villein was servile, he in person was not bond (App.

p. 428). "Bond" is, of course, a term of degree, like others; but if "not bond" means "freeman," the case will not stand. The sole argument is that "had he been so [bond], it is difficult to understand his admission into the conference [in the procedure of the Domesday Survey] apparently on an equality with the other members of the inquest." Now he was plainly not on an equality. The inquest was to be made through the sheriff, the lord of the manor, the parish priest, the reeve, the bailiff, and _six_ villeins out of each hamlet (_Id._ p. 360). It is pretty clear that the villeins were simply witnesses to check, if need were, the statements of their superiors.

The weightiest argument against the darker view of Saxon serfdom is the suggestion of the late Prof. Maitland (_Domesday Book_, p. 223) that the process of technical subordination, broadly called feudalism, was really a process of infusion of law and order. But he confessedly made out no clear case, and historical a.n.a.logy is against him.

Finally, though under the Normans the Saxon slaves appear to have gained as beside the middle grades of peasants (Morgan, _England under the Normans_, p. 225; Ashley, i, 18), it is a plain error to state that the Bristol slave-trade was suppressed under William by "the preaching of Wulfstan, and the influence of Lanfranc" (Green, _Short History_, p. 55; also in longer _History_, i, 127; so also Bishop Stubbs, i, 463, _note_. The true view is put by Maurice, as cited, p. 30). The historian incidentally reveals later (_Short History_, ch. vii, -- 8, p. 432, proceeding on Giraldus Cambrensis, _Expugnatio Hiberniae_, lib. i, c. 18) that "at the time of Henry II's accession Ireland was full of Englishmen who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery, in spite of Royal prohibitions and the spiritual menaces of the English Church." (Cp. Hallam, _Middle Ages_, iii, 316, _note_.) He admits, too (p. 55), that "a hundred years later than Dunstan the wealth of English n.o.bles was sometimes said to spring from breeding slaves for the market." The "market"

was for concubines and prost.i.tutes, as well as for labourers. (Cp.

Southey, _Book of the Church_, ed. 1824, i, 115, following William of Malmesbury; and Hallam, as last cited.) Gibbon justifiably infers (ch. 38, Bohn ed. iv, 227) that the children of the Roman slave market of the days of Gregory the Great, _non Angli sed angeli_, were sold into slavery by their parents. "From the first to the last age," he holds, the Anglo-Saxons "persisted in this unnatural practice." Cp. Maurice, as cited, pp. 4-5. Gregory actually encouraged the traffic in English slaves after he became Pope. (_Ep. to Candidus_, cited in pref. to Mrs. Elstoh's trans. of the Anglo-Saxon Homily, p. xi.)

Thus, under Saxon, Danish, and Norman law alike, a slave trade persisted for centuries. As regards the conditions of domestic slavery, it seems clear that the Conquest lowered the status of the half-free; but on the other hand "there was a great decrease in the number of slaves in Ess.e.x between the years 1065 and 1085" (Morgan, as cited, p. 225; cp. Maitland, p. 35).

In Saxondom, for centuries before the Conquest, "history" is made chiefly by the primitive forces of tribal and local animosity, the Northmen coming in to complicate the insoluble strifes of the earlier English, partly uniting these against them, dominating some, and getting ultimately absorbed in the population, but probably const.i.tuting for long an extra source of conflict in domestic politics. A broad difference of accent, as in the Scandinavian States down to our own day, is often a strain on fellowship. In any case, the Anglo-Saxons at the time of the Conquest, as always from the time of their own entry, showed themselves utterly devoid of the "gift of union" which has been ascribed to their "race," as to the Roman. No "Celts" were ever more hopelessly divided: the Battle of Hastings is the crowning proof.[996] And in the absence of leading and stimulus from a higher culture, so little progressive force is there in a group of struggling barbaric communities that there was only the scantiest political and other improvement in Saxon England during hundreds of years. When Alfred strove to build up a civilisation, he turned as a matter of course to the Franks.[997] The one civilising force was that of the slight contacts kept up with the Continent, perhaps the most important being the organisation of the Church. It was the Norman Conquest, bringing with it a mult.i.tude of new contacts, and an entrance of swarms of French and Flemish artificers and clerics, that decisively began the civilisation of England. The Teutonic basis, barbarous as it was, showed symptoms of degeneration rather than of development. In brief, France was mainly civilised through Italy; England was mainly civilised through France.

Bishop Stubbs, after admitting as much (-- 91, i, 269, 270) and noting the Norman "genius for every branch of organisation,"

proceeds to say "that the Norman polity had very little substantial organisation of its own, and that it was native energy that wrought the subsequent transformation." His own pages supply the disproof.

See in particular as to the legislative and administrative activity of Henry II, -- 147, i, 530-33. As to the arrest or degeneration of the Saxon civilisation, cp. -- 79, i, 227, 228; Sharon Turner, _History of England during the Middle Ages_, 2nd ed. i, 1, 73; H.W.

C. Davis, _England under the Normans and the Angevins_, 1905, p. 1; Pearson, _History of England during the Early and Middle Ages_, 1867, i, 288, 308-12, 321, 343, 346, 347; Abdy, as cited above. Mr.

Pearson's testimony, it should be noted, is that of a partisan and eulogist of the "race."