IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) // .t^ :A 1.0 I.I 163 I!: IM IL25 IIP 1.4 1^ 12.2 1.6 Photographic ^Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, NY. 14580 (716) 872-4503 ^ \ qv ^ 4^ \ :\ Vi''"^'' CIHM/ICMH Microfiche Series. CIHM/ICMH Collection de microfiches. Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions / Institut Canadian de microreproductions historiques k Technical and Bibliographic Notes/Notes techniques et bibliographiques The Institute has attempted to obtain the best original copy available for filming. Features of this copy which may be bibliographically unique, which may alter any of the images in the reproduction, or which may significantly change the usual method of filming, are checked below. 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Whenever possible, these have been omitted from filming/ II se peut que certaines pages blanches ajoutdes lors dune restauration apparaissent dans le texte, mais, lorsque cela dtait possible, ces pages n'ont pas et^ filmdes. Additional comments:/ Corr v-\-v. ill'' 1 ( n I «i! !/'<, • 1.. /i 1 ■* 7r-iin ^^->l. oV^V -V \^^ <^" ^' vJ> THE COXTEMPOIiA It Y RE VIE \V I I I ■ elTort of courage or inlelligouce on the part of (lie nomad. Jiigratimi by Bca docs: to go forth on a strango element at all. courage its re(f.iired; but we can hardly realize the amonnt of courage required to go voluntarily out of siglit of land. The first attempts at shi]i- huilding also imply superior intelligence, or an efl'ort by Avhich the intelliger.ee will bi.: raised. Of the two great races Avhich make up the English nation, the Celtic had only to pass a channel which you can see across, which perhaps in tiie time of the earliest nngration did uot exist. But the Teutons, who are the dominant race and liave supplied thu basis of the English character and institutions, had to juiss a wider sea. Erom Scandinavia especially, England received, under the form of fi'eebooters who afterwards became conquerors and fiettlers, the very core and sinews of her maritime popidaticm, the progenitors of the Blakes and Xelsons. The Northman, like the Phu'nician, had a country too narrow for him, and tindier for ship- building at hand. But the land of thu Phconician was a lovely land, which bound him to itself; and wherever he roved his heart still tinned to the pleasant abodes of Lebanon and the sunlit quays of Tyre. Thus he became a merchant, and the father of all who have made the estranging sea a highway and a bond between nations, more than atoning, by the service thus rendered to humanity, for his craft, his treachery, his cruelty, and his Moloch-worship. The land of the Scandinavian was not a lovely land, though it was a land suited to form strong arms, strong hearts, chaste natures, aiid, with purity, strength of domestic affection. lie was glad to exchange it for a sunnier dwelling-place, and thus, instead of becoming a merchant, he became the founder of Norman dynasties in Italy, Erance, and I'hig- land. We are tempted to linger over the story of these primtuval mariners, for nothiiig equals it in romance. In our days science has gone before the most adventirrous barque, limiting the possibilities of discovery, disenchanting the enchanted seas, and depriving us for over of Sindbad and Elysses. But the I'hocniciau and the Northman put forth into a really unknown v/orld. The Northman, moreovei', was so far as we know the fii'st ocean sailor. If the story of the circumnavigation of i\frica by the Phoenicians is true, it was an astonishiiig enterprise, and almost dwarfs modern voyages of dis- covery. Still it would be a coasting voyage, and the PhaMiician seems generally to have hugged the land. But the Northman put freely out into the wide Atlantic, and even crossed it before Columbus, if we may believe a legend made specially dear to the Americans by the craving of a new country for antiquities. It has been tridy said, that tl e feeling of the Greek', mariner as he was, toAvards the sea, remained rather one of fear and aversion, intensified perhaps by the treacherous character of the squally yEgean ; but the Northman evidently felt perfectly at home on the ocean, and rode joyously, like a seabird, on the vast Atlantic waves. > • • • 4 THE GItEATXESS OF KXGLAXn. \ Not only is a rnco vv'lnch comes 1>y sea likely to bo pcenliai'ly vigorous, i>elf-reliaut, and ineliued, wlieii soUI'mI, to political liberty, but the very proeess of iiiaritiuio migratiuu eaii scarcely fail to intensify the spirit of freedom and independence. Timon or Genghis Khan, sweeping on from liuid to land with the vast human herd und>v his SAvay, becomes more despotic as the herd grows larger by accretion, and the area of its conquests is increased. But a maritime migration is a ]iumber of little jouit-stock enterprises implying Hmited leader- ship, common coxmsels, and a good deal of erpiality among the adven- turers. AVe sec in fact that the Saxon immigration resulted in the foundation of a number of small cou.mnnities which, though they Avere afterwards fused into seven or eight prity kingdoms and ulti- mately into one large kingdom, must, while tliey existed, have fostered luibits^ of local independenco and self-government. :Maritime migra- tion would also facilitate the transition from the tribe to the r.ation, because the ships could hardly be manned on purely tribal principles: the early Saxon communities in England app-ar in fact to have boon semi-tribal, the local bond prcdonunatiiig over the tribal, though a name with a tribal ternnnation is retahied. Room Avould scarcely be found in the ships for a full proportion of women ; the want w^ould be supphed by taking the Avomen of the eon^juercd country ; and thus tribal rules of exclusive intermarriage, and all barriers connected with them, Avould be broken doAvn. Another obvious attribute of an island is freedom from insasion. The success of the Saxon hiA-aders may bo ascril)ed to the absence of strong resistance. The policy of Roman concprest, by disarming the natives, had destroyed their mihtary character, as the policy of British concpiest has done in India, Avhere races Avhich once fought hard against the invade.- under their native itrinccs, such as the people uf Mysore, are noAv Avholly unAvarlike. Anything like national unity, or poAVCr of co-operation against a foreign oiemy, had at the same time been extirpated by a goA'crnment Avhich divided that it nn"ght command. The Northman in his turji OAved his success partly to the Avant of unity among the Saxon principalities, partly and principally to the eonnnand of the sea Avhich the Saxon usually abandoned to him, and Avhich enabled him to choose his OAvn point of attack, and to baine tlie movements of the defenders. AVhen Alfred built a fleet, the case Mas changed. AVilliam of Normandy Avordd scarcely have suc- ceeded, great as his armament Avas, had it not been for the diversion effected in his favour by the landing of the Scandinavian pretender in the North, and the failure of provisions in Harold's Channel fleet, Avhich compelled the fleet to put into port. Louis of Franco Avas called in as a deliverer by the barons Avho were iii arms against the tyran)iy cjf John ; and it is not necessary to discuss the Tory descrip- tion of the coming of AVilliam of Orange as a conquest of England by the Dutch. Bonaparte threatened invasion, but unhappily Avas unable B 2 THE COXTKMPORARY REVJEW to inviulc : uiilmjipily Ave pay, bocaiiso if lie liad landed in P^Dglaiid lie ■vwiuld iis.snrcdly have tliore mot his doom: the liussian campaign Avonld liave been antedated witli a more complete vesiilt, and all tho after-pages in the history of the Arch-iirigand Avould have been torn from the book of fate. P'ngland is indebted fur her political liberties in great measure to tho Teutonic character, but she is also in no small measure indebted to this imnnmity from invasion which has brought Avith it a comparative inniiunity from standing armies. In the middle ages the (]uestion between absolutism aiid that baronial liberty wliich Avas the germ aiid precursor of the popular liberty of after- times turned in great measure upon the relative strength of tho natiniial nn'lifia and of the bands of mercenaries kept in pay by OA'er- reacliing Idngs. The bands of merceiuiries brought over by John proved too strong for the patriot barons, and Avould have annulled tho Groat Charter, had not national liberty found a timely and poAverful, though sinister auxiliary in the ambition of the French Prince. Charles I. had no standing army: the troops taken into pay for the Avars Avitli Spain and France had been disbanded before the outbreak of the Revolution ; and on that occasion the nation Avas able to o\^er- throAv the tyranny Avithotit looking abroad for assistance. But (Jliarles II. had learned Avisdom from his father's fate; he kept up a small standhig army ; and the AVhigs, though at the crisis of the Exclusion Ijill they laid tlicir hands upon their SAA'ords, never A'cntured to draAv them, but alloAved themselves to be proscribed, their adherents to be ejected from the corporations, and their leaders to be b' ought to the scaffold. Resistance Avas in the same A\'ay rendered hopeless by the standing army of James IT., and the patiiots Avere compelled to stretch their hands for aid to AVilliam of Orange. Ea'^cu so, it might have gone hard Avith them if James's soldiers, and aboA-e all Churchill, had been true to their paymaster. Navies are not political ; they do not overthroAv constitutions; and in the time of Charles I. it appears •that the leading seamen were Protestant, and incHncd to the side of ■the Parliament. Perhaps Protestantism had been rendered fashionable in the navy by the naval wars Avith Spain. A third consequence of insular position, especially in early times, is isolation. An extreme case of isolation is presented by Egypt, Avhich is in fact a great island in the desert. The extraordinary fertility of tho valley of the Nile produced an early development, Avhich Ava^ afterwards arrested by its isolation ; the isolatioii, being probably intensified by the jealous excliisiveness of a powerful priesthood Avhich discouraged maritime pursuits. The isolation of England, though comparatively slight, has still been an important factor in her history. She underwent less than the Continental proAances the inllucnce of Roman conquest. Scotland and Ireland escaped it altogether, for tho tide of invasion, having flowed to the foot of the Grampians, soon ebbed to the Hue between the Sohvay and Tyne. Britain has no •I THE ajiEA'J'\i:ss or lwul.wi). f) a moimiiicntK of Uonian power and civilization like those wliich liavc been left in Gaul and Spain, and of I'l-itish Christianity of the Roman ])oriod hardly a trace, monumental or historical, remains. V>y the Saxon conquest England -was entirely severed for a time from the European system. The missionary of ecclesiastical Rome recovered Avliat the legionary had lost. Of the main elements of English cliaracter pohtical and general, live Averc brought togetlier when Ethelbert and Augustine met on the coast of Kent. The king rejtre- sented Teutonism ; the missionary represented Judaism, Christianity, imperial and ecclesiastical Rome. AVe mention Judaism as a separate element, because, among other things, the image of the Hebrew monarchy has certainly entered largely into the political conceptions of Englishmen, perhaps at least as largely as tlu; image of imperial Rome. A sixth element, classical Repubhcanism, came in with the Reformation, while the political and social influence of science is only just beginning to be felt. Still, after the conversion of England by Augustine, the Church, which was the main organ of civilization, and almost identical Avith it in the early middle ages, remained national ; and to make it thoroughly Roman and Papal, in other words to assimilate it completely to the Church of the Continent, was the object of Ililde- brand in promoting the enterprise of William, Roman and Papal the English Church was made, yet not so thoroughly so as completely to destroy its insidar and Teutonic character. The Archl)ishop of Can- terbury was still I\(pa alicrhis orhh ; and the struggle for national inde- pendence of the Papacy coumienced in Phigland long before the struggle for doctrinal reform. The Reformation broke up the con- federated Christendom of the middle ages, and England was then thrown back into an isolation very marked, though tempered by her sympathy with the Protestant party on the Continent. In later times the growth of European interests, of commerce, of international law, of international intercourse, of the comnmnity of intellect and science, has been graduall}^ building again, oii a sounder foundation than that of the Latin Church, the federation of Europe, or rather th.e federation of mankind. The political sympathy of England with Continental nations, especially with France, has been increasing of late in a very marked manner ; the French Revolution of 1830 told at once upon the fortunes of English Reform, and the victory of the Republic over the re- actionary attempt of May was profoundly felt by both parties in England. Placed too close to the Continent not to be essentially a part of the European system, England has yet been a peculiar and semi-indepen- dent part of it. In European progress she has often acted as a balancing and moderating power. She has been the asylum of van- quished ideas and parties. In the seventeenth century, when absolutism and the Catholic reaction prevailed on the Continent, she was the chief refuge of Protestantism and political liberty. AVhen the French Revolution swept Europe, she threw herself into the anti-revolutionary 6 THE COXTEMPORARY REVIEW. KC al( ho tncoloi' lias go no nearly round the world, at least nearly round I'iUrope; Ijut on the lla;^ of England still remains the religi;)u.s pyiubnl of the era beforr tlie lievolution. The insular arroganee of the English eharaeter is a eomnionplaee joke. It finds, perlia})s, its strongest expression in the saying of 3Iilton that the manner of fiod is to reveal things first to His English- men. It has made Englishmen odious even to those -who, like the Spain'nrds, have received liberation or proteetion from English hands. It stimulated the desperate desire to see Frauee rid of the " Goddams" Avhieh inspired .loan of Are. For an imperial people it is a very luducky peculiarity, since it precludes not oidy fusion but sympathy and almost intercourse Avitli the subject races. The kind heart of Lord Elgin. Avlicn he "was CJovernor-General of India, was shocked by the absolute want of sympathy or bond of any kind, except love of contpiost, between the Angld-Indian and the native; and the gulf apparently, instead of being filled up, now yawns wider than ever. It is needless to dwell on anything so commonplace as the effect of an insnlar position in giving birth to commerce and develo2:)ing the corresponding elements of political character. The British Islands are singularly Avell placed for trade with both hemispheres; in them, more than in any other point, may be placed the connnercial centre of the world. It may be said that tlio nation looked out unconsciously from its cradle to an immense heritage beyond the Atlantic. France and Spain looked the same way, and became competitoi's with England for ascendency in the Xew AVorld ; biit Ihigland was more maritime, and the most maritime was sure to prevail. Canada was c(Uiquered by the British fleet. To tlie commerce and the maritime enterprise of former days, which Avcre mainly the results of geographical position, has been added witliin the last centmy the vast development of manufactures produced by coal and steam, the parents of manufactures, as well as the expansion of the iron trade in close coinieetion with manufactures. Nothino; can bo more marked than the effect of 'S industry on p(jlitical character in the case of England. From beii the chief seat of reaction, the North has been converted by maini- fixctures into the chief seat of progress. The Wars of the Roses were not a struggle of political principle ; hardly even a dynastic struggle; they had their origin partly in a patriotic antagonism to the foreign queen and to her foreign councils ; bxit they Avere in the main a vast faction-fight between two sections of an armed and turbulent nobility turned into buccaneers by the French Avars, and, like their compeers all over Europe, bereft, by the decay of Catholicism, of the religious restraints with which their morality was bourid up. But the Lancas- trian party, or rather the party of Margaret of iVnjou and her favourites, was tlie more reactionary, ami it had the centre of its strength in the North, whence Margaret drew the plundering and devastating host Avhich gauied for her the second battle of St. Albans and paid the I I Tin: GRKATXESS OF KNGLAND. 7 penalty of its ravages in the merciless slang-liter of Towton. Tlio North liad been kept back in the race of pvog-ress l)y agricultural inferiority, by the absence of commerce Avitli the Continent, and by border Avars Avith Scotland. In the South was the seat of prosperous industry, wealth, and comparative civilization; ami the banners of the Soutliern cities were in the armies of the House of York. Tho South accepted the Reformation, while tlio North was the scone of tho Pilgrimage of Grace. Coming down to tho Civil War in tlio time of Charles I., we find the Parliament strong in the South and East, where arc still the centres of commovco and manufactures, even tho iron trade, which has its smelting works in Sussex. In the North tho feudal tie between landlord and tenant, and the sentiment of tho past, preserve much of their force ; and the great power in those parts is the Manpiis of Newcastle, at once great territorial lord of tho middle ages and elegant grand seigneur of the Kenaissanco, who brings into the field a famous regiment of his own retainers. In certain towns, such as Bradford and Manchester there are germs of manufacturing industiy, and these form tho sinews of tho Parliamentarian party in tho district which is headed by tho Fairfaxes. But in the Reform movement which extended through tho first half of the present century, tho geographical position of parties was reversed ; the swarming cities of the North were then the great centres of Liberalism and tho motive power of reform ; while the South, having by this time fallen into tho hands of great landed proprietors, was Conservative. The stimulating efl'ect of populous centres on opinion is a very familiar fact : even in tho rural districts it is noticed bv canvassers at elections that men who work in gangs are generally more inclined to the Liberal side than those who work separately. In England, however, the agricultural element always has been arid remains a full counterpoise to the manufacturing and commercial element. Agricultural England is not what Pericles called Attica, a mere suburban garden, the embellishment of a queenly city. It is a substantive interest and a political power. In the time of Charles I. it happened that, OAving to tho great quantity of land throAvn into the market in consequence of the confiscation of the monastic estates, Aviiich had slipped through the f ngers of the spendthiift courtiers to Avhom they Avero at first granted, small freeholders Avere very numerous in the South, and these men, like the middle class in tho toAvns, being strong Pro- testants, A\'cnt Avith the Parliament against the Laudian reaction in rehgion. But land in the hands of great proprietors is Conservative, especially AAdien it is held under entails and connected Avith hereditary nobility ; and into the hands of great proprietors the land of England has noAV entirely passed. Tho last remnant of the old yeomen freeholders departed in tho Cumberland Stiitesmen, and the yeoman freeholder in England is noAV about as rare as the other. Commerce has itself assisted the process by giving birth to great fortunes, the oAvners of 8 'IIIK COXrEMl'UllAIlY REVIIIW. Avliicli arc led l>v social ambition to l)uv lauded ostatcB, bocau.se to land llie odour of IVudal superiority still elings. and it is almost the necessary (puxliiication for a title. The land has also actually absorbed a largo portion of the wealth produced by niaiiufaetures, and by the general dt'velopnaent of industry; the estates df Northern landowners espe- cially have enormously increased in value, through the increase of population, not to mention the not inconsiderable appropriation of commercial wealth by marriage. Tlnu^ '.he (Conservative element retains its predcjiuinance, and it even seems as though the laud of Milton, Vane, Cromwell, and the lieforniers of 1832, might after all become, politically as well as territ(U'ially, the domain of a vast aristocracy of landowners, and the most reactionary instead of tho most progressive country in Europe. Before the repeal of tho Corn Laws there was a strong antagonism of interest between the land- owning aristocracy and the mainifacturers of the North : but that antagonism is now at an end; the sympathy of wealth has taken its ]ilace : the old aristocracy has veiled its social pride and learned to conciliate the new men, Avho on their part arc mere than willing to enter the privileged circle. '^I'his junction is at ])resent the great fact (if English pohtics. and was the main cause of the overthrow of the Liberal Government in 1874. The growth of the great cities itself seems likely, as the number (if poor householders increases, to furnish Keaction with auxiliaries in the shape of political Lazzaroni capable of being organized by wealth in opposition to the higher order of work- men and the middle class. In Harrington's " Oceania."' there is much nonsense; but it rises at least to the level of Montesquieu in tracing the intimate connection of political power, even under elective institii- tions, with wealth in land. Hitherto, the result of the balance between the landowning and conunercial elements has been steadiness of political progress, in con- trast on the one hand to the commercial re}mblics of Italy, whose political progress Avas precocious and rapid but shortlived, and on the other hand to great feudal kingdoms where commerce Avas compara- tively weak. England, as ^ ., has taken but few steps backwards. It remains to be seen what the future may bring under the changed conditions which we have just described. English commerce, more- over, may have passed its acme. Her insidar position gave Great Ih'itain during the Napoleonic wars, Avith immunity from invasion, a monopoly of manufactures and of the carrying trade. This element of her commercial supremacy is transitory, though others, such as the possession of coal, are not. Let us now consider the effects of the division between the two islands and of those between different parts of the larger island. Tho most obvious effect of these is tardy consolidation, which is still indi- cated by the absence of a collective name for tho people of the three kingdoms. The writer was once rebuked by a Scotchman for saying 7 II /-: ( ; /.' /;. i / 'xi:ss or exc laxd. 9 "En^-luiul" and "English,"' instead of saying "Great Britain" and " Ihitisli," lie replied that the rebuke was just, but that wo must say "British and Irish." The Scot had overlooked his poor relations. We always speak of Anglo-Saxons and identify the extension of the Colonial Empire with that of the Anglo-Saxon race, ihit even if we assume that the Celts of England and of the Sccjteh Lowlands were exterminated by the Saxons, taking all the elements of Celtic popiilation in the two islands together, they must bear a very consider- able proportion to the Teutonic element. That largo Irish settlements are being formed in the cities of Northern England is proved by election addresses cocpiettiug Avith Home Rule. In the competition (jf the races on the American Continent the Irish more than holds its own. In the age of the steam-engine the Scotch Highlands, the mourlains of Cumberland and Westmoreland, of Wales, of Devon- shire, ciud CornAvall, are the asylum of natural beauty, of poetry and hearts Avhieh seek repose from the din and turmoil of commercial life. In the prima) val ago of ciuujaest they, with sea-girt Ireland, were the asylum of the weaker race. 'J')i'U-e the Celt found refuge when Saxon invasion swept him from the open country of England and from tlie Scotch Lowlands. Ther ■ iie was preserved Avitli his own language, indicating by its variet} i dialects -t-lio rapid flux and change of un- written speech ; Avith his own rurm of Christianity, that of Apostohc Britain ; Avilh his un-Teutoiiic gifts and weaknesses, his lively, social, sympathetic nature, his religious enthusiasm, essentially the same in its Calvinistic as in its Catholic guise, his superstition, his chinnishness, his devotion to chiefs and kiaders, his comparaLivo iiiditference to institu- tions, and lack of natural aptitude for self-government. The fui-ther Ave go in these inrpnries the more reason there seems to be for believing that the peculiarities of races are not congenital, but impressed by primaeval circumstance. Not only the same moral and intellectual nature, but the same primitive institutions, are foimd in all the races that come imder our vuew; they appear ahke in Teuton, Celt, and Semite. That Avhich is not congenital is probably not indelible, so that the less favoured races, placed nnder happier circumstances, may in time bo brought to the level of the more faA^oured, and nothing Avarrants inhuman pride of race. But it is surely absurd to deny that peculiarities of race, A\hen formed, are important factors in histor}'. ]\lr. Buckle, Av^ho is most severe upon the extravagances of the race theory, himself runs into extraA'agances not less manifest in a different direction. He connects the religious character of the Spaniards Avitli the influence of apocryphal volcanoes and earthquakes, Avhereas it palpably had its origin in the long struggle Avith the ]\Ioors. He in like manner cojinects the theological tendencies of the Scot/i Avith the thuiiderstorms Avhich he imagines (Avrongly, if Ave may judge by our OAvn experience) to be very frequent in the Highlands, Avhereas Scotch theology and the religious habits of the Scotch generally Avere w 10 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. formed in tlio Lowlands and among the Teutons, not among tlie Cc'lt«. Tho remnant of tlio Celtic -ace in Cornwall and West Devon Avas pniall, nud wr. • Rnbduod and half incorporated by the Teutons at a comparatively early period ; yet it played a distinct and a decidedly Celtic part in the Civil War of the seventeenth century. It played a more important part towards the close of the following century by giving itself almost in a ma^B to John Wesley. No doubt the neglect of the remote districts by tlio Bishops of Exeter and their clergy left Wesley a clear field; but the temperament of the people was also in his favotn-. Anything fervent takes with the Celt, while he cannot abide the religious compromise which cf)mmends itself to the practical 8 axon. In the Great Charter there is a provision in favour of the Welsh, Avho were allied with the I'arons in insurrection against the (*rown. The lUrons were fighting for the Charter, the Welshmen only for their barbarous and predatory independence. l>ut the struggle for Welsh independence helped those who were struggling for th.o Charter ; and the remark may be extended in substance to the general influence of AVales on the political contest between the Crown and the Tyarons. Even under the House of Lancaster, Llewellyn was faintly reproduced in Owen Glendower. The powerful monarchy of the Tudors finally completed the annexation. But isolation survived independence. The Welshman remained a Celt, preserved his lan- guage and his clannish spirit, though local magnates, such as the family of Wynn, filled the place in his heart once occupied by the chief. Ecclesiastically he Avas annexed, but refused to be incor- porated, never seeing the advantage of walkhig in the middle path which the State Church of England had traced between the extremes of Popery and Dissent. lie took Slethodism in a Calvinistic and almost Avildly enthusiastic form. In this respect his isolation is likely to prove far more important than anything which Welsh patriotism strives to resuscitate by Eisteddfodds. Li the struggle, appare-itly imminent, J)etween the system of Church Establishments and religions equality, Wales furnishes a most favourable battle-gronnd to the party of Disestablishment. The Teutonic realm of England was powerful enough to eubduo, if not to assimilate, the remnants of the Celtic race in Wales and their other western hills of refuge. But the Teutonic realm of Scollnnd was not large or powerful enough to subdue the Celts of the High- lands, whose fa.stnesses constituted in geographical area the greater portion of the country. It seems that in the case of the Highlands, as in that of Ireland, Teutonic adventurers found their way into the domain of the Celts and became chieftains, l)ut in becoming chief- tains they became (*elts. Down to the Hanoverian times the chain of the Grampians which froni the Castle of Stirling is seen rising like a rilK GREATNESS OF ENGLAND. 11 ! wall over the rieli plain, divided from each other two nationalities, differing totally in ideas, institutions, habits, and costume, as well as in speech, and the less civilized of v.diich still regarded the more civilized as alien intruders, ^\hi]o the more civilized regarded the loss civilized as robbei-s. Internally, the topographical character of the Iliglilands was favourable to the continuance of the clan system, because each clan having its own separate glen, fusion was precluded, and the progress towards union went no further than the domination of the more powerful clans over the less powerful. Mountains also preserve the general equality and brotherhood which are not less essential to the constitution of the clan than devotion to the chief, by preventing the aso of that great nn"nister of aristocracy, the horse. At Killiecrankie and Prestonpans the leaders of the clan and the humblest clansmen still charged on foot side by side. Macaulay is un- doubtedly right in saying that the Highland risings against AViUiam III. and the first two Georges Avere not dynastic but clan movements. They were in fact the last raids of the Gael upon the country which had been wrested from him l)y the Sassenach. Little cared the clans- man for the principles of Filmer or Locke, for the claims of the House of Stuart or for those of the House of Brunswick. Antipathy to the Clan Campbell was the nearest approach to a political motive. Chiefs alone, such as the unspeakable Lovat, had entered as political condof- tlcri into the dynastic intrigues of the period, and brought the clay- mores of their clansnien to the standard of their patron, as Indian chiefs in the American wars brc^iglit the tomahawks of their tribes to the standard of France or England. Celtic independence greatly contributed to Wig general perpetuation of anarchy in Scotland, to the backwardness of Scotch civilization, and to the abortive weakness of the Parliamentary institutions. Union with the more powerful king- dom at last supplied the force requisite for the taming of the Celt. Highlanders, at the bidding of Chatham's genius, became the soldiers, and are now the pet soldiers, of tlie British monarchy, A Hanoverian tailor with improving hand shap(^d the Highland plaid, which had originally resembled the simple dnpery of the Irish kern, into a garl) of complex Ijeauty and well suited for fancy balls. The power of the chiefs and the substance of the clan system were finally swept away, though tlic sentiment lingers, oven in the Transatlantic abodes of t^.o clansmen, and is prized, like the dress, as a remnant of social- pic- turesqueness in a prosaic and levelling age. The hills and lakes— at the thought of which even Gil>bon shuddered— are tlie favourite retreats of the luxury which seeks in wildness refreshment from civili- zation. After Ciilloden, Presbyterianism effectually made its way into the Highlands, of Avhich a great part had up to tha*^ time been little better than heatlien ; but it did not fail to take a strong tinge of Celtic enthusiasm and superstition. Of all the lines of division in Great Britain, however, the most ♦ 12 THE COXTEMFORARY REVJEW. important politically has been that which is least clearly traced by the hand of nature. The natural barriers between England and vScotland Avere not sufficient to prevent the extension of the Saxon settlements and Icingdoms across the border. In the name of the Scotch capital we have a monument of a union before that of IGOo. That the Norman Conquest did not include the Saxons of the Scotch Low- lands was due chiefly to the menacing attitude of Danish pretenders, and the other military dangers which led the Conqueror to guard himself on the north by a broad belt of desolation. Edward J., in attempting to extend hif.i feudal supremacy over Scotland, may Avell have seemed to himself to have been acthig in the interest of both nations. Union Avould have put an end to border war, and it Avould have delivered the Scotch in the Lowlands from the extremity (jf feudal oppression, and the rest of the country from a savage anarchy, giving them in place of those curses by far the best govern- ment of the time. The resistance came partly from mere barbarism, partly from Norman adventurers, who Avere no more Scotch than English, whose aims were purely selfish, and who woidd gladly have accepted Scotland as a vassal kingdom from I'^dward's hand. But the annexation would no doubt have fonnidably increased the power of the Crown, not oidy by extending its dominions, but by removing that which was a support often of aristocratic anarchy in England, but sometimes of rudimentary freedom. Had the whole island fallen under one victorious sceptre, the next wielder of that sceptre, inider the name of the great Edward's wittold son, would have been Piers Gaveston. But what no prescience on the part of any one in the time of Edward L could possibly have foreseen was the inestim- able benefit which disunion and even anarchy indirectly conferred on the whole island in the shape of a separate Scotch Reformation. Divines, when they have exhausted their reasonings about the rival forms of Church government, will probably find that the ai'gument Avhich had practically most effect indetermhiingthe question was that of the much decried but in his way sagacious James L, "No bishop, no king I " Li England the lieformation was semi-Catholic ; in Sweden it was Lutheran ; but in both countries it was made by the kings, and in both Episcopacy was retained. Where the Iveforma- tion was the work of the people, more popular forms of Church government prevailed. In Scotland the monarchy, always weak, was at the time t)f the Reformation practically in abeyance, and the master of the movement Avas emphatically a man of the people. As to the nobles, they seem to have thought oidy of appropriating the Church lands, and to have been wilhng to leave to the nation the spiritual gratification of settling its own religion. Probably they also felt with regard to the disinherited proprietors of the Church lands that "stone dead had no fellow." The rcsvdt was a democratic and thoroughly Protestant Church, which drew into itself the highest \ T THE GREA TiYESS OF ENGLAND. la i 1 energies, political as "vvell as religious, of a strong and great-hearted people, and by "vvliich Laud and his confederates, when they had apparently overcome resistance in England, were, as Miltcjii says, '' more robustionsly liandled." If the Scotch auxiliaries did not win the decisive battle of ^larston Moor, they enabled the English Parliamen- tarians to tight and Avin it. During the dark days of the Restoration English resistance to tyranny was strongly supported on the ecclesi- astical side by the martyr steadfastness of the Scotch, till the joint effort triumphed in the Revolution. It is singular and sad to find Scotland afterwards becoming one vast rotten borough, managed in the time of Pitt by Dundas, who paid the boroughmongers by appoint- ments in India, with calamitous consequences to the poor Hindoo. But the intensity of the local evil, perhaps, lent force to the revulsion, and Scotland has ever shice been a distinctly Liberal element in British politics, and seems now likely to lead the way to a complete measure of religious freedom. Nature, to a great extent, fore-ordained the high de-stiny of the larger island ; to at least an equal extent she fore-ordained the sad destiny of the smaller island. Irish history, studied impartially, is a grand lesson in political charity ; so clear is it that in these deplorable annals the more important part Avas played by adverse circimistance, the less important by the malignity of man. That the stronger nation is entitled by the law of force to conquer its Avcaker neighbour and to govern the conquered in its OAvn iatei'ost is a doctrine which civilized morality abhors. But in the days before civilized morality, in the days when the only law was that of natural selection, to Avhicli philo- sophy by a strange counter-revolution seems now inclined to return, the smaller island was almost sure to be conquered by the possessors of the larger, more especially as tlie smaller, cut off from the Continent by the larger, lay completely Avithin its grasp. The map, in short, tells us plaiidy that the destiny of Ireland Avas subordinated to that of Great Britain. At the same time, the smaller islatid being of consider- able size and the channel of considerable breadth, it Avas likely that the resistance Avould be tough and the conquest slow. The unsettled state of Ireland, and the half-nomad condition in Avhicli at a compara- tively late period its tribes remained, Avould also help to protract the bitter process of subjugation; and these again were the incAdtable results of the rainy climate, which, Avhile it clothed the island Avith green and made pasture abundant, forbade the cultivation of grain. Ireland and Wales alike appear to haA'^e been the scenes of a precocious civilization, merely intellectual and literary in its character, and clos(dy connected Avitli the Church, though including also a bardic element derived from the times before Christianity, the fruits of which Avere poetry, fantastic laAv-making, and probably the germs of scholastic theology, combined, in the case of Ireland, Avith missionary enterprise and such ecclesiastical architecture as the Round ToAvers. But cities 14 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. tlicre Aveve none, and it is evident tliat llio native (.luircli -with difH- ciilty Bnstainud her higliei- life amidst tlie influences and encroaclunents of surrounding barbarism. The Anglo-Norman con(piest of Ireland was a supplement to the Norman conquest of England ; and, like the Norman conquest of England, it was a religious as Avell as a political enterprise. As IIildel)rand had commissioned AVilUam to bring the national Clmrch of England into complete submission to the bee of Rome, so Adrian, by the Bull Avliich is the stumljliugblock of Irish Catholics, granted Ireland to Henry upon condition of his reforming, that is, Romanizing, its primitive and schismatic Church. Ecclesiastical intrigue had already been Avorking in the same direction, and had in some measure prepared the Avay f(ir the conqueror by disposing the heads of the Irish clergy to receive him as the emancipator of the Church from the secidar oppression and imposts of the chiefs. But in the case of England, a settled and agricultural country, the conquest Avas complete and final ; the coiKpierors became eA'cryAA'here a ncAV upper class Avhich, though at first alien and oppressive, became in time a national nobility, and ultimately blended Avith the subject race. In the case of Ireland, though the septs Avere easily defeated by the Norman soldieiy, and the fcn-mal submission of their chiefs Avas easily extorted, the conquest Avas neither complete nor final. In their hills and bogs tlu' Avandering septs easily cA'aded the Norman arms. The Irish Clianncl Avas Avide. The road lay through North AVales, long unsubdued, and, ca'Cu Avlien subdued, mutinous, and presenting natural obstacles to the passage of lieaA'y troops. The centre of Anglo-Norman poAver lay far aAvay in the south-east of England, and the force of the monarchy Avas either attracted to Continental fiekls or absorbed by struggles Avitli baronial factions. Richard II., connng to a throne Avhich had lieeu strengthened and exalted by the achicA'c- inents of his grandfather, seems in one of his moods of fitful ambition to have conceiA^ed the design of completing the concpiest of Ireland, and he passed OA'cr Avith a great poAvcr ; but his fate shoAved that the arm of the monarchy Avas still too short to reach the dependency Avithout losing hold upon the imperial country. As a rule, the suljju- gation of Ireland during the period before the Tudors Avas in effect left to private enterprise, Avhich of course confined its cft'orts to objects of priA'ate gain, and never thought of undertaking the systematic subjugation of native fortresses in the interest of order and civilization. Instead of a national aristocracy the result Avas a military colony or Pale, betAveen the inhabitants of Avhich and the natives raged a per- petual border Avar, as savage as that between the settlers at the Cape and the Kaffirs, or that between the American frontier-man and tlic Red Indian. The religious quarrel Avas and has always been secon- dary in importance to the struggle of the races for the land. lu the period folloAving the conquest it Avas the Pale that Avas distinctively Romanist. But when at the Reformation the Pale became Protestant, i 4 M *•; THE GliEA TNESS OF ENGLAND. 15 I tliG natives, fronx antagoinsin (if race, became more inteuBely Catholic, unci Avere dra\\'ii into the league of Catholic powers on the Couthient, in Avliich they sutTered the usual fate of the dwarf who goes to hattle with the giant. By the strong luonarchy of the Tudors the conquest of Ireland was completed with circumstances of cruelty suflicient to plant undying hatred in the breast of the people. But the struggle for the land did not end there ; instead of the form of conquest it took that of confiscation, and was waged by the intruder with the arms of legal chicane. In the form of eviction it has lasted to the present hour ; and eviction in Ireland is not like eviction in England, where great manufacturing cities receive and employ the evicted; it is star- vation or exile. Into exile the Irish people have gone by millions, and thus, though neither maritime nor by nature colonists, they have had a great share in the peopling of the New World. The cities and rail- roads of the United States are to a great extent the monuments of their labour. In the political sphere they have retaine.l the weakness produced by ages of political serfage, and are still the il'brls of broken clans, with little about them of the genuine republican, apt blindly to follow the leader who stands to them as a chief, while they are in- stinctively hostile to law and government as their immemorial oppres- sors in their native land. British statesmen, when they had conceded Catholic emancipation and afterwards disestaljlishment, may have fancied that they had removed the root of the evil. But the real root Avas not touched till Parliament took up the question of the land, and effected a compromise whieh rnay perhaps have to be again revised before complete pacification is attained. In another way geography has exercised a sinister influence on thi,' fortunes of Ireland. Closely approaching Scotland, the northern coast of Ireland in course of time invited Scotch innnigration, which formed as it were a Presbyterian Pale. If the antagonism between the Eng- lish Episcopalian and the Irish Catholic was strong, that between the Scotch Presbyterian and the Irish Catholic was stronger, ''i'o the English Episcopalian the Irish Catholic was a barbarian and a Eomanist; to the Scotch Presbyterian he was a Canaanite and an idolater. Nothing in history is more hideous than the conflict in the North of Ireland in the time of Charles I. This is the feud which has been tenacious enough of its evil life to propagate itself even in the New World, and to renew in the streets of Canadian cities the brutal and scandalous conflicts which disgrace Beli'ast. On the other hand, through the Scotch colony, the larger island has a second hold upon the smaller. Of all political projects a federal union of Ihigland and Ireland with separate Parliaments under the same Crown seems the most hopeless, at least if government is to remain parliamentary; it may be safely said that the normal relation between the two Parlia- ments would be collision, and collision on a question of peace or war would be disruption. Bu? an independent Ireland would be a feasible i 16 rjIE CONTEMPORAIiY REVIEW. as well as natural disject of Irifjli aspiration if it were not for the strength, nioi'al as well as numerical, of the two intrnsivt element?. How conkl tlio Catholic majority l)c restrained from legislation which the Protestant minority wonkl deem oppressive ? And how could the Protestant minority, being as it is more English or Scotch than Irish, he restrained from stretching its hands to I'higland or Scotland for aid? It is true that if sc(.j^)ticism continues to advance at its present rate, the lines of religious separation maybe obliterated or become too fi\iiit to exercise a great practical influence, and the bond of the soil may then prevail. But the feeling against England Avhich is the strength of Irish Nationalism is likely to subside at the same time. Speculation on unfulfilled contingencies is not invariably barren. It is interesting at all events to consider what would have been the con- sequences to the people of the two islands, and to humanity generally, if a Saxon England and a Celtic Ireland had lieen allowed to groAV up and develop by the side of each other untouched by Norman conquest. In the case of Ireland we should have been spared centunes of oppres- sion which has profoundly reacted, as oppression always does, on the character of the oppressor ; and it is diflicult to believe that the Isle of Saints and of primitive Universities would not have produced some good fruits of its own. In the Norman conquest of England historical optimism sees a great political and intellectvial blessing beneath the disguise of barbarous havoc and alien tyranny. The Conquest was a continuation of the process of migratory invasions by wdiich the nations of modern Europe were founded, from restless ambition and cupidity, when it had ceased to be beneficent. It was not the super- position of one primitive element of population ou another, to the ultimate advantage, possibly, of the compound; but the destruction of a nationality, the nationality of Alfred and Harold, of Bede and il^jlfric. The French were superior in military organization ; that they had superior gifts of any kind, or that their promise was higher than that of the native Phiglish, it would not be easy to prove. The language, we are told, was enriched by the intrusion of the French element. If it was enriched it was shattered ; and the result is a mixture so hetero- geneous as to be hardly available for the purposes of exact thought, while the language of science is borrowed from the Greek, and as regards the unlearned mass of the people is hardly a medium of thought at all. There are great calamities in history, though their ejects may in time be worked off, and they may be attended by some incidental good. Perhaps the greatest calamity in history were the wars of Napoleon, in which some incidental good n:iay nevertheless be found. To the influences of geographical position, soil, and race is to be added, to complete the account of the physical heritage, the influence of climate. But 'v\ the case of the British Islands we must speak not of climate, but of chmates ; for within the compass of one small realm are climates moist and comparatively dry, warm and cold, bracing A Tilt: OnKATXESS OF ENGLAXl). 17 and ouervadiig, tlic results of special iufluences the raugo of wLIeli is limitt'il. Civilized man to a great extent makes a climate for liimself ; his life in the Novtli is spent mainly ind'oors, where artifn-ial heat replaces the smi. The idea v.'hich still liauuts us, that fti'midable vigour and aptitude for cou(|uest are the appanage (jf Northern races, is a survival from the state in which the rigour of natiu-e selected and hardened the destined conrpierors of the Koman Empire. Tiio stoves of yt. I'ttersburg are as enervating as the sun of Naples, and in the struggle between the Northern and Southern States of Americra not the least vigorous soldiers were those who came from Louisiana. In the barbarous state the action of a Northern climate as a turce of natural sel'-ctiou must be tremendous. The most important of the races which peopled the British Islands had already undergdiie that action in their original abodes. They coidd, however, still feel the beneficent influence of a- climate on the whole eminently favourable to health and to activity- ; bracing, yet not so rigorous as to kill th(jse tender plants of humanity which often bear in them the most precious germs of civilization ; neither confining the inhabitant too much to the shelter of his dwelling, nor, as the suns of the South are apt to do, drawing him too much from home. The climate and the soil together formed a good school for the character of the young nation, as they exacted the toil of the husbandman and rewarded it. Of the varieties of temperature and weather within tlie islands the national charactei' still bears the impress, though in a degree always decreasing as the assimilating agencies of civilization make their way. Irrespectively of the influence of special employments, and })erhaps even of peculiarity of race, mental vigour, independence, and reasoning power are always ascribed to the people of the North. Variety, in this as in other respects, would naturally produce a balance of tendencies in the nation conducive to moderation and evenness of progress. The islands arc now the centre of an Empire which to some minds seems more important than the islands themselves. An Empire it is called, but the name is really applicable only to India. The relation of England to her free colonies is not in the proper sense of the terjn imperial ; while her relation to such dependencies as Gibraltar and JIalta is military alone. Colonization is the natural and entirely beneficent result of general causes, obvious enough and already mentioned, including the power of self-government, fostered by the circumstances of the colonizing country, which made the character and destiny of New England so different from those of New France. Ecpially natural was the choice of the situation for the origimxl colonies on the ehoi'e of the Ncav ^Vorld. The foundation of the Australian Colonies, on the other hand, was deternnned by political accident, compensation for the loss of the American Colonies being sought on the other side of the globe. It will perhaps be thought VOL. XXXIV. 18 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. hereafter tliat the quarrel with New England was calamitous in its consequences as avcII as in itself, since it led to the diversion of British emigration from America, where it supplied the necessary element of guidance and control to a democracy of mixed but not uncongenial races, to Australia, where, as there must be a limit to its own multi- plication, it may hereafter have to struggle for mastery with swarming multitudes of Cliinese, almost as incapable of incorporation with it as the negro. India and tlie other conquered dependencies are the fruits of strength as a war power at sea combined with weakness on land. Though not so generally noticed, the second of these two factors has not been less operative than the first. Chatham attacked France in her distant dependencies when he had failed to make any impression on her own coasts. Still more clearly was Chatham's son, the most incapable of war ministers, driven to the capture of sugar islands l)y his inability to take part, otherwise than by subsidies, in the decisive struggle on the Continental fields. This may deserve the attention of those who do not think it criminal to examine the policy of Empire. Outlying pawns picked up by a feeble chessplayer merely because he could not mate the king do not at first sight necessarily commend themselves as invaluable possessions. Carthage and Venice were inerely great commercial cities, which, when they entered on a career of conquest, were compelled at once to form armies of mercenaries, and to incur all the evil consequences by which the employment of those vile and fatal instruments of ambition is attended. Englaiid being, not a 'onimercial city, but a nation, and a nation endowed with the highest military qualities, has pscaped the fell necessity except in the case of India; and India, under the reign of the Company, and even for some time after its legal 'annexation to the Crown, was regarded and treated almost as a realm in another planet, with an army, a poli- tical system, and a morality of its own. But now it appears that the wrongs of the Hindoo are going to be avenged, as the wrongs of the conquered have often been, by their moral effect upon the conqueror. A l)ody of barbarian mercenaries has appeared iipon the European scene as an integral part of the British army, while the reflex influence of Indian Empire upon the political character and tendencies of the imperial nation is too manifest to be any longer overlooked. England now stands where the paths divide, the one leading by industrial and commercial progress to increase of political liberty ; the other, by a career of conquest, to the political results in which such a career has never yet failed to end. At present the influences in favour of taking the path of conquest seem to ""reponderate, and the probability seems to be that the leadership of political progress, which has hitherto belonged to England and has constituted the special interest of her history, will, in the near future, pass into other hands. GoLDWiN Smith.