CHAPTER V.

MODERN ENGLAND.

With such qualities, and such a history as have been glanced at in the previous chapter, it is not strange that this people should lead the 'world when modern facilities of action opened all regions to mutual intercourse. For more than a hundred years after the discovery of America they were wholly occupied with domestic disturbances arising from rival claims to the throne or from religious conflicts. Enterprising men took part in the work of discovery, but no considerable part of the people were ready to enter the openings presented. Religious and dynastic conflicts had first to be settled. During the seventeenth century constitutional ques tions were foremost and the kings and people were engaged in a deadly struggle. This was closed in 1688 by the definite success of the people. Henceforth there were only minor questions of adjustment that would settle themselves, in time, and the people and Government began to prepare for the great commercial career opened to them by universal dis

covery.

During the troubled times preceding the breaking out of civil war between the King and the Parliament many thousand people emigrated to America for greater liberty to follow their own convictions and to find a more promising field of activity. During the civil commotions terminating toward the close of the seventeenth century they slowly increased and prospered, laying the bases of a new and more liberally organized state, and contributing materially by their trade to the commercial development and prosperity of the Mother Country. England also was slowly gathering her resources and energies for future expansion.

THE COLONIES AND COLONIAL POLICY.

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Although England had a considerable commerce in the seventeenth century, which increased rapidly during the eighteenth, she had been essentially an agricultural country up to nearly the close of the latter period. Holland was the leading commercial country during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the eighteenth England took the lead, very decidedly. Her people showed a capacity for adapting themselves to foreign countries without losing their vigor, and the Government displayed skill and good sense in managing the colonies after they had been acquired. They were gained principally, except the Thirteen American colonies, up to the close of the eighteenth century, by conquest during various wars with European and other powers. Perhaps the resolution and warlike tenacity of the race had even more to do with the gradual extension of the colonies than tact or good sense or lust of conquest. It was certainly by sustained vigor that they were held after being once acquired, and the lesson of conciliatory treatment given by the loss of the American colonies was deeply laid to heart.

Long before the studies and experiences of modern times had taught European statesmen the true theory of colonization and commerce England had acted with instinctive and characteristic liberality toward her foreign possessions. They were held, and often maintained at considerable cost, for their commercial value to the English people. They were not expected to enrich the treasury of the Home Government in any other way. The loss of the American colonies was caused by the attempt to raise a revenue from them to reimburse to the Home Treasury the money spent in armaments and wars for their protection. This was a departure from traditional policy and in violation of rights established by the English people in contest with their kings and always tenaciously maintained by them. The principle was too well recognized in England, and Englishmen in the colonies had too much of the bold and resolute spirit of their race, for

such a departure from the constitutional precedents of the of the country to succeed.

The colonies now the United States of America, became another England, still more progressive, in some ways, and not less active. They received and moulded into their own spirit millions of immigrants of other nationalities. Their rapid development of the vast resources of the New World and growing wealth made them much more valuable to England as an independent nation than they could have been as dependent colonies, and the Mother Country grew rich, as they developed, from trade with them.

When the nineteenth century opened England was engaged in a desperate war with Napoleon, the Imperial Genius of the French, as regenerated by the Revolution ten years before, for the commercial supremacy in Europe. She was successful and came out, in 1815, the foremost nation of modern times in political influence and material power. She was "Mistress of the Seas," had acquired possession of India, numerous islands in the West and East Indies, had numerous possessions in Africa, America, Asia and Australia. She was at the threshold of her imperial career. For the last hundred years commerce had stimulated manufactures ever more and more. Invention had produced the steam engine and various manufacturing machinery. An American had invented the Cotton Gin, and that country could supply any desirable quantity of raw cotton for textile fabrics. England's vast trade (for those times) and the wealth of the East Indies had accumulated abundance of capital and her expansion was almost as wonderful and rapid as that of the American Republic.

In 1800 England had about 8,000,000 people, and all the British Islands about 12,000,000. The interests of the people were still largely agricultural and the most valuable part of the productive population was the yeomanry, or small farmers. But commerce, trade, and a twenty years' war had

ENGLAND BEGINS HER GREAT CAREER.

735

laid the foundation for future changes. Manufactures were already beginning to develop on a scale before unknown in any country, and gradually the whole state of the country underwent an astonishing change. Large towns sprung up, machinery multiplied the possibility of results a hundred fold while greatly cheapening the price of manufactured articles; a stable government, a sober, sensible, vigorous people were prepared to make the most of these new forces, for great operations. Americans were mainly occupied in settling and subduing a vast new interior region, while the neighboring European nations were giving their chief attention to their forms of government. The old forms were antiquated, rigid, and unsuited for modern times, but so firmly upheld by the higher classes, in whose interest they had been built up, that reconstruction could be accomplished only by violence. This kept them disturbed and in a state highly unfavorable to industrial prosperity. So England reaped the first great harvest from invention, machinery and steam as industrial forces,

Her situation, so near the most civilized nations of the Old World; her position, so favorable for commerce with the New World and with Asia; her experience in, and almost monopoly of, commerce tended to concentrate capital in her snug, intelligently governed group of islands, and make her the center of a world-wide activity. Her geological and national history seemed to have been conducted in view of the opportunities now opening. Whatever minor difficulties might require removal, there was substantial freedom and self-government for the active classes of her people, and for industry and trade, with an assurance of such tranquility as their progress and prosperity required.

All the great historical commotions had been caused by a slow drifting away of the Government from the original Anglo-Saxon principle of self-governing communities, and the periodical effort of the people to restore the lost force of

the individual in the body politic-to maintain "the rights of Englishmen" as against the usurpations of them by the Government. A decisive and lasting victory had been gained more than a hundred years before, although the full benefit of it had yet to be experienced. A quiet, often unperceived, tendency toward liberalizing the Government was in progress. The mass of the people did not govern directly, for the House of Commons was chiefly composed of the higher and wealthier classes; but those classes were trusted by the people, and fairly represented their interests as then understood. England was really controlled by those who were most intelligent and, if not unselfish, were sensible enough to show a real regard to the popular wishes. When the time came reforms would be made in a quiet, orderly manner, or at least without disastrous public excitement, and business interests might dwell secure under the shadow of the British Constitution.

The production of unlimited steam power required vast quantities of fuel, and it was now found that Nature had supplied this need during the Geological Ages, millions of years before, by surpassingly rich deposits of the best qualities of coal beneath the fertile surface of all the islands. It was especially abundant in England itself, near the trade centers, and in the midst of the largest and most intelligent and enterprising population. Invention of machinery for producing quantities of manufactured goods, limited only by the capacity of the markets of the world to receive, was thus supported in the nineteenth century by all other necessary conditions of overwhelming success. Before proceeding to

estimate the vast measure of this success it is desirable to understand about what was the condition of English industry and trade in the last part of the eighteenth century when the new and extraordinary growth began.

The enormous national expansion commenced about the same time in England as in America, and was immediately