ceorls. As far back as the year 1848 the illustrious Cobden anticipated what has now come to pass in the shires, and expressed the belief that the head of each shire might be an official somewhat analogous to a State governor in the United States. He felt that a radical transformation of the House of Lords was impending, and had an idea of an Upper House resembling that of America, in which each county should be represented by two senators.1 An American naturally feels that such a change would be salutary: it is at any rate quite in the spirit of the ancient Anglo-Saxon freedom. In municipalities, too, an administrative system far nearer that of the old borough-moot, so distinctly marked in the time when the cities were rising, than the oligarchic abuses that displaced it for so long, has come to prevail. The plain people, while pushing themselves to the front, have certainly not been neglectful of the means by which they may best fit themselves for the responsibilities which they have assumed. In the transformation of England, so marked since 1832, and by no means as yet at an end, the voices of the timid are constantly heard deprecating innovations; and as constantly the voices of scholars and thinkers declaring that the so-called innovations are but a reverting to ancient precedents. In the momentous debate and strife the incidents are sometimes startling. It has been felt often that no other so audacious hand has in our generation been laid upon the very foundations of society and property as that of Henry George; Henry George of scheme reform. 1 Letter to George Combe, August 28, 1848. Morley: Life of Cobden, p. 327. but to make real Henry George's theory of land-holding, it is now claimed, it would only be necessary to revive that primitive system of tenure, in use through all the early centuries, and never down to the present moment entirely discontinued, by which the land was owned by the community, no individual being in such a sense a proprietor that he could call even his homestead his very own.1 In the circumstances, it is only natural for patriotic Englishmen to wish there was something to balance and serve as a brake to the car of the Flexible and rigid constitutions. State, as it sways and plunges forward along these lines of change. Even though progress be but a return to the old, is the return wise always? and if wise, would it not be expedient to return at a far slower rate, with more respectful treatment of mediæval traditions, unwisely adopted perhaps in their day, yet still revered for centuries, and not to be left behind without much risk to the social and political framework? At present, the House of Commons is omnipotent in the State. As Christian, the commentator upon Blackstone, expresses it, if the House of Commons should see fit, like Herod, to pass a law to kill all children below a certain age, there is no authority to restrain it.2 Of Britons of conservative temper, no spokesman more entitled to respect has been heard of late years than Sir Henry Maine, 3 who looks across the Atlantic with admiring eyes at America, deeming her most happy in the possession 1 The Land and the Community, Rev. S. W. Thackeray, 1889. See also Progress and Poverty, Book VII, Chap. IV. 2 Blackstone's Commentaries, I, p. 91. 84 Popular Government," by Sir Henry Maine. of her Supreme Court, her powerful Senate, her rigid, authoritative instrument behind the legislature, checks most effectual when popular whim is disposed to go too fast and too far, checks which England is utterly without. To reverence the Constitution is, of course, a sentiment which every American drinks in with his mother's milk; and all who wish well to the mother-land will desire for her that as she takes on new things, some such powerful guarantees of order and stability may come. Possibly it has been, and is still, a fortunate circumstance that in this time of reconstruction the British constitution has been, in Bryce's phrase, "flexible.” When, however, the effete feudalism is thoroughly sloughed off, one feels that the constitution must be “rigid,” — that there must be some wisely framed instrument to stand as law over even the law-givers.1 England is not only herself at the present hour practically a democratic republic, but is the parent of vast republics in the quarters of the earth most distant from her.2 In America, Australia, and Africa, eighty per cent of the territories best adapted by climate and soil to the habitation of Europeans are in her possession, and have become the seats of vigorous and growing Anglo-Saxon peoples. The extent to which these have become endowed with the ancient freedom so thoroughly recovered by the mother-land, can be made plain in a few words. The old colonial empire, the Thirteen Colonies, which, after revolting, 1 See view of Hon. Seth Low, in Bryce: American Commonwealth, I, p. 683. 2 Sir T. Erskine May: Constitutional History, II, p. 537. became the United States, had been ruled after the precedents of Spain. The dependencies were regarded as a source from which the mother-land might be enriched, and their interests were neglected and sacrificed in the pursuit by the mother-land of this selfish end. "Till alienated by the behavior of England, the colonists had far more kindly feelings toward her than she had toward them. To them she was the old home; to her they were simply customers."1 Exasperation in the Colonies was the inevitable fruit of so base a policy, and in the end England, like Spain, lost the new lands whose rights she had abused. The bitter experience, as we have seen, perhaps saved her own freedom; she derived from it also the wisdom which enabled her, when presently the vast new colonial empire fell within her grasp, so to proceed that the dependencies, instead of chafing under their bond, cherish it with warm affection, looking upon independence as a calamity rather than a blessing. Pitt's Colonial Bill of 1791. The independence of America had been not long secured, when the foremost men of England began to utter the wiser doctrines as to colonial rule, which were to prevail in the future. In 1791, Pitt introduced a bill for the government of Canada, "remarkable as recognizing for the first time the wise and generous principle of independent colonial institutions, which since then has been fully developed in every dependency of the British Crown capable of local self-government." 2 At the same time, Fox, though in opposition to Pitt, exclaimed that "the only method of retaining distant 1 Bryce American Commonwealth, I, p. 416, note. 2 Massey: History of England from the Accession of George III, colonies with advantage is to enable them to govern themselves." Both Whigs and Tories share the credit of this model for all subsequent colonial constitutions.1 But though the proper plan was recognized, it was not at once put in practice. England, absorbed in the struggle of the French revolutionary and Napoleonic period, though she snatched from her enemies vast foreign possessions, had little leisure to organize and administer with care. Canada was neg lected until she rose at last in rebellion; while the only use found for Australia was as a prison, fenced off from England by many thousand miles of sea, to which criminals could be transported. By such transportation much had been done at an earlier time to blast the prospects of portions of America. The evil policy was pursued in the South Sea for many years with so much energy that only ruin. seemed possible for the country which nature had made so inviting. The day of better things came with the year 1832, and the admission in England of a vast body of the plain people to a share in the government. Parliament became at once in every way more humane and wise; and not the least of the improvements which it introduced into the administration of the empire, was the freedom from home interference which it very soon bestowed upon the colonies. They rapidly increased until at the present moment the population of Canada, gathered into the great provinces, confederated, Freedom of after the example of the United States, Greater Briinto the Dominion, numbers five million; 1 Yonge Constitutional History, p. 128. tain. |