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 By W. Cunningham, P.P. 
 
 Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Jtrch> 
 deacon of Ely 
 
 An Essay on Western Civilization 
 In Its Economic Aspects 
 
 Vol. I. Ancient Times 
 
 Vol. II. Mediaeval and Modern Times 
 
 Sold Separately
 
 ENGLISH INFLUENCE 
 
 ON THE 
 
 UNITED STATES 
 
 BY 
 
 W. CUNNINGHAM, D.D., F.B.A. 
 
 Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Archdeacon of Ely 
 
 formerly Lecturer on Economic History 
 
 in Harvard University 
 
 NEW YORK 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 1916 
 
 67560
 
 e 
 
 > 
 
 |0 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 ^ I ^HESE essays are on the subjects of addresses 
 *- which I delivered during October and Novem- 
 ber, 1914, in Boston and Cambridge, Mass., in 
 Providence, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore. 
 They were primarily intended to show the close 
 connection between English and American life; 
 but they also emphasise the fact that from the 
 first there have been divergences between English 
 institutions, as they were maintained and developed 
 in the Old Country, and the similar social elements 
 as transplanted and moulded by the environment 
 of a New World and the experience it afforded. 
 I have drawn at times on architectural evidence, 
 the importance of which does not seem to me to 
 have been fully appreciated, either as regards the 
 precise character or the long continuance of English 
 influence. 
 
 As I had many opportunities of conversation 
 with American friends on these topics, I feel able 
 
 3
 
 vi Preface 
 
 to put forward the opinions here expressed as some- 
 thing more than the impressions of a passing visitor ; 
 and I venture to hope that these essays may do 
 something to explain the Englishman to the Ameri- 
 can, and the American to the Englishman, and thus 
 conduce to the mutual understanding which is the 
 basis of a firm friendship. 
 
 W. C. 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE, 
 CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 II March, 1916.
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 IN the two volumes of my Essay on Western Civili- 
 sation I tried to mark the special contributions 
 which have been made by different peoples in the 
 past to the civilised life of modern Europe; I did 
 not endeavour, however, to enter on any discussion 
 of the movement which has been the characteristic 
 feature of recent times, or to analyse the diffusion of 
 European civilisation throughout the world. The 
 essays which are here collected indicate the lines 
 on which we must proceed in order to deal with 
 this problem. I have endeavoured to separate one 
 particular thread, and to show the ties which have 
 connected England with one of the new nations of 
 the world the United States. Many influences 
 have been at work French and Spanish, Teutonic 1 
 and Scandinavian; but England, as the Mother 
 Country, and the source of ideas of law and govern- 
 ment in the United States, may be rightly regarded 
 as the main channel by which European civilisation 
 1 Roosevelt, History as Literature and other Essays, 99.
 
 viii Introduction 
 
 has reached North America. I have tried to render 
 the discussion more precise, by confining myself 
 to what is specially English rather than British; 
 it is only in the chapter on academic life (Chapter 
 IV) that I have touched on anything that is charac- 
 teristically Scottish. 
 
 The influence of the English stock and of English 
 origin can be traced in every aspect of American 
 life, rural and urban, social and political ; but there 
 is need for discrimination as to the degree of influence 
 exercised in different departments. The connec- 
 tion was extraordinarily close at first in regard 
 to rural life and the organisation of the township 
 (Chapter I). While the city life of America shows 
 traces of an English origin, it appears to be almost 
 entirely an independent development (Chapters II 
 and III). It is interesting, too, to notice how much 
 the two countries have shared a common opinion 
 as to the limitation of the functions of government 
 and the free play of private interests on the one 
 hand (Chapter V), and as to the wisdom of holding 
 aloof from foreign complications on the other 
 (Chapter VI) ; and to see how difference of experi- 
 ence, during the last century and a half, has been 
 reflected in the attitude towards modern social and 
 political problems which the people of each country 
 are inclined to take.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE v 
 
 INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 I. THE TOWNSHIP. 
 
 (i) The settlement in Britain and in America compared. 
 
 The city and colonisation ..... I 
 
 Cemeteries and burial grounds .... 6 
 
 The settlers and their environment ... 8 
 
 The English village . . . . . . 10 
 
 (ii) The Township in England. 
 
 The meaning of the term 12 
 
 Communal administration . . ... . 16 
 
 Several pasturage . . . . . . 19 
 
 The revival of the Township . . . . 21 
 
 (iii) The changes in New England. 
 
 Administrative efficiency ..... 24 
 
 Political education 25 
 
 National character ...... 27 
 
 II. TOWN PLANNING. 
 
 (i) Comparison of the growth of English 
 and of American Towns. 
 
 The nucleus of an English town . . - 29 
 
 The market-place and Civic Patriotism . . 33 
 
 (ii) Building Plots for Private Houses. 
 
 The Crusades 38 
 
 Hippodamus of Miletus ..... 40 
 
 Fourteenth century English suburbs . . . 41
 
 PAGE 
 
 (iii) The Fire of London. 
 
 The occasion for Town Planning ... 44 
 
 The Restoration and the Royal Society . . 45 
 
 Radiating streets 48 
 
 III. PUBLIC BUILDINGS. 
 
 (i) Monuments of Civic Patriotism in England. 
 
 Town halls 51 
 
 Market crosses and houses 54 
 
 The old State House at Boston ... 56 
 
 (ii) Meeting Houses. 
 
 Halls for preaching 58 
 
 The transaction of Parish Business ... 59 
 
 (iii) Renaissance Architecture. 
 
 Mansion houses 61 
 
 The cupola and dome 63 
 
 (iv) The Stars and Stripes. 
 
 The Washington shield ..... 66 
 
 The East India Company's flag ... 68 
 
 IV. THE COLLEGE COURSE. 
 
 (i) Emmanuel and Harvard. 
 
 Conscious imitation 72 
 
 Puritan training 73 
 
 Yale ... 75 
 
 (ii) The Scottish Universities. 
 
 Intellectual activity 76 
 
 Civic aims ........ 77 
 
 The formal study of English .... 78 
 
 Professorial teaching 80
 
 Contents xi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 (iii) Princeton and Edinburgh. 
 
 The founding of Princeton .... 83 
 
 Presbyterianism 84 
 
 Scottish influence as personal, rather than official 86 
 
 (iv) Public Libraries. 
 
 Parochial libraries 88 
 
 Dr Thomas Bray 89 
 
 V. MODERN SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 
 
 (i) Patriarchal and Progressive Societies. 
 
 The organisation of the Manor .... 91 
 
 The Black Death and its consequences . . 93 
 
 Negroes and economic freedom .... 95 
 
 The emergence of modern problems . . . 97 
 
 (ii) The Elizabethan Realm. 
 
 The realm as a whole 99 
 
 Loyalty to the Crown ..... 100 
 
 The solidarity of interests 101 
 
 Loyalty in the Colonies 103 
 
 (iii) The Nation and its Dependencies. 
 
 The ambition for political power . . . 104. 
 
 The landed interest 105 
 
 The monied men 107 
 
 Humanitarian legislation 108 
 
 The Parting of the Ways 109 
 
 (iv) The Industrial Revolution and its 
 effects in England. 
 
 The Age of Invention in 
 
 Clothiers and Farmers . . . . .114 
 
 State supervision **6 
 
 Organised labour "9
 
 xii Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 (v) The awakening of the British conscience. 
 
 Laissez faire . . . . . . .120 
 
 The State as policeman . . . . .122 
 
 The mechanism of society . . . . .123 
 
 Neglect of public duty . . . . .125 
 
 Private interests . . . . . . .126 
 
 The limitations of American experience . . 130 
 
 VI. THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF NATIONAL 
 POWER AND INFLUENCE. 
 
 (i) The tradition of Insular Policy. 
 
 Isolation from foreign entanglements . . 133 
 
 Superiority at sea ...... 135 
 
 America and internal development . . . 138 
 
 (ii) The claim to arbitrate. 
 
 Dr Woodrow Wilson 139 
 
 Misunderstandings 140 
 
 (iii) The British Empire in the Twentieth Century. 
 
 Economic control discarded . . . .142 
 Territorial aggrandisement discarded . . .143 
 A maritime empire 146 
 
 (iv) Imperial Co-operation. 
 
 Attempts at assimilation 149 
 
 The religious sense of responsibility . . . 152 
 
 The problems of Empire ..... 154 
 
 The sense of mission 157 
 
 (v) The Ties of Kinship. 
 
 Racial affinities ....... 159 
 
 National experience . . . . . .162 
 
 The neglect of opportunities . . . .163 
 
 INDEX . . 165
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE TOWNSHIP 1 
 
 (i) The Settlement in Britain and in America 
 compared. 
 
 The word Colonisation implies the plantation 
 of an organised community, and cannot be properly 
 used to describe the migration of individual men 
 and women who have no ties to hold them together ; 
 this is true both of the ancient and of the modern 
 world. The surplus population of Greek cities 
 swarmed off, with the design of reproducing their 
 own type of civilised life on some distant coast. 
 The Romans settled colonies of veterans as outposts 
 on the frontiers of the Empire, and archaeological 
 research brings home to us the pains which they 
 took to carry their civilisation with them. This, 
 too, was the aim of the English and French settlers 
 in North America. The Pilgrim Fathers, and the 
 
 1 Harvard Historical Society.
 
 2 The Township [CH. 
 
 founders of other colonies, were not casual immi- 
 grants who prepared to take their chances of making 
 their way as new comers in a strange land; they 
 desired to realise the ideals of life in a civilised com- 
 munity which they had framed in the old country. 
 Their habits of life had been formed; and they 
 did not wish to break with England altogether, 
 but to infuse English institutions with a new spirit 
 and make the community more truly Christian. 
 
 The main difference between ancient colonisation 
 and the plantation of the New World lies in the 
 fact that the city was the unit of Greek civilisation, 
 and colonisation consisted in the planting of cities. 
 The necessities of military organisation rendered it 
 inevitable that Roman colonisation should have a 
 similar character; but the English plantations in 
 America aimed on the whole at being self-sufficing 
 communities which would raise the necessaries of 
 life from their own soil, though they did not forget 
 the possibility of exporting their products. They 
 established themselves in groups which were con- 
 venient for defence against possible Indian attacks, 
 and for the prosecution of tillage and pasture farming. 
 Inevitably they reproduced, in the New World, the 
 methods of farming and the organisation of agricul- 
 tural labour with which they had been familiar in 
 England; though with such modifications as were
 
 i] Settlement in Britain 3 
 
 rendered necessary by the conditions of a new 
 country. England had not yet become either a 
 great commercial or industrial nation ; her material 
 prosperity was mainly due to her success in the 
 cultivation of the land; corn had been one of the 
 principal exports of Britain, both in Roman, and 
 later in Elizabethan times. Considerable attention 
 was given in the early seventeenth century to the 
 possibilities of reclaiming waste land and extending 
 agriculture within Great Britain, and the founders 
 of the American colonies aimed at organising agri- 
 culture and land management on English lines in 
 the New World. 
 
 There may well be some question, however, as 
 to the precise character of the system and methods 
 of tillage which they carried with them. At the 
 end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seven- 
 teenth century English agriculture was in a state 
 of transition; at an earlier period the manorial 
 system had been dominant, and this type of organi- 
 sation would doubtless have been reproduced, as 
 it was in New France. A few generations later 
 the collective management of arable land had so 
 far broken up in England, that there would have 
 been little reason to look for any signs of it in the 
 New World ; but at the close of the reign of Eliza- 
 beth and under the first two Stuarts, there was an 
 
 i a
 
 4 The Township [CH. 
 
 extraordinary variety of agricultural conditions in 
 different parts of England; and it is interesting to 
 try to see how closely the various elements, which 
 were established in the plantations, were connected 
 with prototypes in seventeenth century England. 
 
 In the plantation of the New World, history was 
 repeating itself. Some noo years earlier the Anglo- 
 Saxon tribes had migrated from the Continent and 
 planted themselves in England. There is an 
 interesting parallel between the tribal settlement 
 in Britain and the plantation of the Atlantic coast ; 
 for the ingrained habits of the old stock were once 
 more illustrated. New England became a land of 
 true nucleated villages, not of the separate hamlets 
 which characterise Celtic settlement 1 . The colonists 
 established themselves in agricultural communities, 
 according as they were attracted by natural condi- 
 tions and the convenience of wood and water 2 . 
 But while there is this broad similarity, there are 
 also striking contrasts between the settlement of 
 the Anglo-Saxons in Britain and the plantation of 
 New England. 
 
 When the Anglo-Saxons planted themselves in 
 Britain they found the relics of an ancient civilisa- 
 
 1 See Meitzen, Siedelung und Agrarwesen der Germanen, 
 especially 11. 1195. 
 
 8 Tacitus, Germania, c. 16.
 
 i] Imperial Civilisation 5 
 
 tion; they entered on the possession of a highly 
 cultivated country, which had, till recently, been 
 one of the granaries of the Roman Empire; much 
 of the land they occupied was doubtless under 
 cultivation when the Britons were driven out, and 
 there was little to be done in the way of clearing 1 . 
 The Angles and Saxons as they drove the Britons 
 back and occupied one district after another, became 
 acquainted with fruit trees and cereals which the 
 Romans had taught the Britons to cultivate, and 
 with breeds of horses, sheep and cattle which had 
 been introduced from the Continent. The Anglo- 
 Saxons could profit immensely from the material 
 vestiges of the arts of life as practised by the Romans, 
 but there was a complete break between the Imperial 
 political system and the life of the English people as 
 it was gradually organised. 
 
 This may be noted both in town and country; 
 the Roman roads had been the great arteries of 
 communication in the Empire, for commercial as 
 well as for military purposes, but the Anglo-Saxons 
 had no use for such facilities for travel ; they regarded 
 
 1 The Southern, Midland and Eastern Counties of England 
 which were occupied by the Romans for a long period of 
 years have had a character impressed on them which differs 
 from that of the parts of Britain north of the Ribble and 
 the Tees and west of the Dee and the Wye, where there are 
 few traces of permanent occupation by the Romans.
 
 6 The Township [CH. 
 
 the roads as convenient boundaries by which to 
 mark the limits beyond which their cattle should 
 not stray, but their villages were not built upon 
 the roads. The parish map of Cambridgeshire 
 illustrates the contrast between rural life under the 
 Romans, and after the English occupation. The 
 Roman roads, as well as the old British lines of 
 fortification, seem to have been useless to the new 
 comers for their original purposes; but like the 
 river channels, these roads and dykes were made 
 to serve as boundaries between one village and 
 another, and formed a territorial framework, into 
 which their villages were fitted by the settlers. 
 
 The contrast in the habits of life is still more 
 striking in the towns, such as London, Lincoln and 
 York, where the site of the Roman city has been 
 adopted for an English town. Usages in regard to 
 the burial of the dead are among the most persistent 
 of social habits and the Romans buried their dead 
 in cemeteries outside the city like those of the 
 catacombs at Rome. When the Roman troops 
 were withdrawn and the Britons fell back towards 
 the West, the Roman cities must have fallen into 
 decay, if they were not wholly deserted ; the English 
 were not tempted to occupy them at all at first; 
 but as commerce began to develop and centres of
 
 l] Cemeteries and Burial Grounds 7 
 
 trade sprang up afresh, it became convenient to 
 reoccupy portions of the old site. The English 
 carried their own habit of burial into the towns, 
 and buried their dead in plots adjoining their houses, 
 so that numerous burying grounds were set aside 
 within the cities. The difference of habit between 
 the English and the Romans in this respect has left 
 a deep mark on English life. In the Middle Ages, 
 when there was an intense realisation of the unseen 
 world, the religious sense demanded that there 
 should be places for worship in close connection 
 with burial grounds; and all through the rural 
 districts, every village burying ground was conse- 
 crated, and churches were erected, so that regular 
 provision for Christian rites was rendered available 
 through the length and breadth of the land. Ecclesi- 
 astical Institutions took a territorial character and 
 the burying ground in every English village was 
 associated with the village church. Modern cities 
 are forced to conform to the Roman practice and 
 to provide cemeteries outside the town; but it is 
 interesting to note that the English habit of burial, 
 as contrasted with the Roman, had asserted itself 
 in the New World. At Portsmouth in New 
 Hampshire, there are several examples of small 
 burying grounds, established in the home lots 
 within this populous place. Puritanism was shy of
 
 8 The Township [CH. 
 
 superstitious observances in regard to the departed, 
 and the close association of places for burial with 
 facilities for Christian prayer and worship seems to 
 have been the exception rather than the rule, at 
 least in Massachusetts 1 . This practice was appro- 
 priate to the changed spirit of the time, for a parish 
 church and a parish burying ground are found in 
 every village in England, but comparatively little 
 provision has been made for maintaining Christian 
 ordinances throughout large rural areas in New 
 England 2 ; meeting houses were not erected by the 
 colonists unless there was a prospect of a considerable 
 congregation to hear sermons, and grounds were 
 set aside for burial wherever it seemed convenient. 
 
 There was one striking contrast between the 
 personnel of the original English settlers in Britain 
 and that of the colonists in New England. The 
 primitive hero is represented as a handy man who 
 might have some acquaintance with land manage- 
 ment as well as with seamanship, who could forge 
 the sword he wielded in battle, and was skilled as 
 
 1 The depositing of George Whitefield's remains at New- 
 buryport, under the pulpit where he last preached, with the 
 arrangement for showing his relics, is probably unique. 
 
 2 Governor Rollin of New Hampshire. Proclamation in 
 Concord Evening Monitor, 6 April 1899. Quoted by Cunning- 
 ham, Christianity and Social Questions, 58. Compare also 
 p. 152 below.
 
 i] Roman Husbandry 9 
 
 a bard ; he did his best at everything his hand found 
 to do but he could hardly have been said to be an 
 expert. Eleven hundred years later when the 
 American coast was colonised, the division of 
 employments had long been recognised; those who 
 were organising a new plantation endeavoured to 
 see that the colonists should be provided with skilled 
 artificers of every kind 1 , and, as clergy, doctors and 
 lawyers were joining in the new ventures, men of 
 education were available who could be relied upon 
 to take a leading part in the management of affairs. 
 There were also great differences in the oppor- 
 tunities for learning and for improvements which were 
 afforded by the changed conditions. It is impossible 
 to gauge how much the English were indebted to 
 Rome, or what English agriculture in the Middle 
 Ages owed to Imperial survivals in Britain, and to 
 the introduction of Roman practice through monastic 
 influence. Gregory the Great, who sent out the 
 first mission to the Angles, was a careful and skilful 
 administrator of the great estates of the Roman 
 See; and the Benedictine monasteries, which were 
 planted in every part of England, maintained a 
 type of agricultural organisation that was generally 
 pursued throughout the whole country. Each 
 
 1 Advertisement, 1609. Cunningham, Growth of English 
 Industry and Commerce, 11. 338.
 
 I0 The Township [CH. 
 
 village was a unit of collective agriculture, where 
 the various inhabitants, who had shares of land 
 and oxen for ploughing, co-operated together in 
 agricultural labour. All had to conform to the 
 same system in regard to the management of land 
 and the rotation of crops. But though there were 
 some valuable products in the New World with 
 which the English settlers had been previously 
 unacquainted, they had comparatively little to 
 learn in regard to the arts of life from their Indian 
 neighbours. 
 
 A typical English village in the later Middle 
 Ages, with its burying ground and church, consisted 
 of a main street along which the houses were ranged. 
 Each house facing the street had a yard and garden 
 or orchard behind, which constituted the home lot ; 
 while there might sometimes be a row or two of 
 humbler cottages set end-wise towards the street, 
 with little, if any, ground attached to them. The 
 arable holdings lay intermixed in common fields 
 which stretched beyond the home lots; and each 
 husbandman could claim a larger or smaller number 
 of the half-acre strips which were not separated by 
 any fence, but merely marked out by narrow grass 
 baulks. Each husbandman had a share of the hay 
 of the meadow; and all pastured their cattle 
 together on the common waste, and on such portions
 
 i] Common Cultivation n 
 
 of the open fields as were not under crop. The 
 settlements which the colonists laid out in the New 
 World were similar in many respects to those they 
 had left in the Old. Arrangements were made for 
 common pasturage on the common; it appears to 
 have been quite usual for the settlers in New England 
 to use the arable fields for common pasturage after 
 the crops were cleared from the ground ; but in one 
 respect there was a complete departure from the 
 traditional system. The practice of laying out each 
 man's holding as a number of separate strips, 
 intermixed with the strips of other owners, in an 
 arable field was abandoned 1 ; and each man had 
 his arable, and sometimes his meadow land in 
 sever alty 2 : the system of common cultivation in 
 common fields does not seem to have been introduced 
 into the New World. The typical arrangement of 
 New England arable land did not correspond at 
 all to the typical virgate in Mr Seebohm's map of 
 Hitchin 3 . The arable lands were held in severalty; 
 
 1 On the laying out of land in tiers and granting allotments 
 in each tier, compare C. M. Andrews, River Towns of Con- 
 necticut, 45 (Johns Hopkins Studies in Historical and Political 
 Science, Series vn.). 
 
 2 On difficulties in regard to rights of meadow, see Hudson, 
 Lexington, 33. 
 
 8 English Village Community ; this map has been repro- 
 duced in Cunningham's Growth of English Industry and 
 Commerce, i. 44.
 
 12 The Township [CH. 
 
 and the normal holding was an oblong strip, with 
 a narrow frontage towards the river or the street 1 . 
 It is interesting to note that the methods of farming 
 for which provision was thus made in New England 
 closely reflect the conditions which were becoming 
 current in Elizabethan England 2 . Collective culti- 
 vation was falling into desuetude, and energetic 
 farmers demanded scope for individual manage- 
 ment of arable land; but the practice of common 
 pasturage was still very generally retained 3 . 
 
 (ii) The Township in England. 
 
 The settlements which were formed in the New 
 World embodied an immense amount of experience 
 which had been acquired during the centuries that 
 intervened between the invasion of Britain and 
 the English colonisation of any part of North 
 America: and this holds good, not only of the 
 
 1 The lots at Maiden in 1634 were eight times as long as 
 they were broad (Corey, History of Maiden, 61). Compare 
 also the map of allotments in Witherfield in C. M. Andrews, 
 op. cit. 5. The same general method of arrangement is found 
 in Pennsylvania (Browning, Welsh Settlement in Pennsylvania, 
 31) and in Canada, W. B. Munro, Seignior al System in Canada 
 (Harvard Historical Studies), 80. 
 
 2 See p. 20 below. 
 
 8 Each individual was responsible for fencing his own 
 boundaries so as to prevent damage to his neighbour's crops. 
 C. W. Alvord, Introduction to Collections of Illinois Historical 
 Library, n. pp. xxii, 139. Reynolds, Pioneer History, 49.
 
 l] The Township in England 13 
 
 methods of tillage, but of habits of self-government. 
 "The Puritans who colonised New England did not," 
 as Mr Fiske 1 rightly points out, "invent the town 
 meeting. They were familiar already with the 
 proceedings of the vestry meeting and the manorial 
 courts, but they were severed now from church and 
 from aristocracy." A close examination is necessary, 
 however, in order to show precisely what they 
 left behind and what they carried with them to the 
 New World. 
 
 Throughout the Middle Ages there were two 
 distinct elements in the administration of English 
 rural life, and it is a problem of great difficulty to 
 make out in what fashion they were combined at 
 any particular place or time 2 . There was, on the 
 one hand, the manorial or seigneural authority, 
 which exercised control over the whole organisation, 
 and served as the link through which each village 
 discharged its duties and responsibilities towards 
 the realm as a whole 3 . On the other hand, there 
 was an element of communal assent and approval, 
 which was none the less real because it is exceedingly 
 obscure. There are innumerable records which 
 preserve the history of English villages from the 
 
 1 American Political Ideals, 49. 
 
 2 W. J. Ashley, Introduction to translation of Fustel de 
 Coulange's The Origin of Property in Land, p. xli. 
 
 8 See below, p. 103.
 
 14 The Township [CH. 
 
 manorial point of view; but communal manage- 
 ment was very generally a matter of custom and 
 tradition, and we have to rely for the most part 
 on incidental allusions. In the plantation of the 
 New World these elements may be said to have 
 fallen apart ; in Virginia and the South, the manorial 
 system and the organisation of labour by dependents 
 were introduced, and a similar system was established 
 by the Dutch in New York, and by the French in 
 Canada, Louisiana and the valley of the Ohio ; and in 
 these areas the communal element fell into the back- 
 ground, especially where the planters were dependent 
 on slaves or servitors for agricultural labour. In New 
 England, on the other hand, the manorial element 
 seems to have been quite unimportant, while com- 
 munal control became the method by which local 
 administration of internal affairs was carried on. 
 The township had existed in England from time 
 immemorial, but it did not attain its full develop- 
 ment until it was transplanted from the old country 
 to the New World. 
 
 The term township, which is typical of New 
 England, has almost dropped out of use in the 
 greater part of England, though it is still familiar 
 in the Northern Counties ; we speak more commonly 
 of parishes or manors or villages; and it is not 
 quite clear whether a township was only another
 
 i] The Township in England 15 
 
 name for these groups, or whether it had any special 
 significance. We can perhaps settle the matter 
 most easily by considering the way in which this 
 special term is applied. One of the earliest instances 
 is in the Rolls of Parliament, where it is applied to 
 the village of Chesterton, which was mostly com- 
 prised in a royal manor and was a parish (1414) *. 
 On the other hand, there were many parishes, 
 especially in the North of England, which contained 
 a number of townships ; the parish of Kendal 
 contained twenty-four " townships or constabularies, 
 and fifteen chapelries 2 "; while the borough of 
 Much Wenlock, in Shropshire, consisted of several 
 separate townships. Life in an English village had 
 various aspects, and it seems that the terms parish 
 and manor and township were ordinarily applicable 
 to the same social group. When it is viewed in 
 its ecclesiastical relations, and with reference to 
 episcopal authority, it is termed a parish ; its relation 
 to civil authority and the payment of taxation 3 is 
 accentuated if it is called a manor, and with respect 
 to the communal management of its internal affairs 
 it is properly designated a township. The township 
 
 1 Rot. Parl. rv. 603. 
 
 2 Nicholson and Burn, Westmorland, I. 65. 
 
 1 Townships were assessed for the wages of Knights of 
 the Shires in 1444. Rot. Parl. v. ill.
 
 16 The Township [CH. 
 
 and its officials were concerned with internal police 1 ; 
 but it had also important functions to discharge 
 during the Middle Ages in the management of the 
 cultivation of the Common Fields, and the exercise 
 of rights of pasturage on the Common Waste 2 . It 
 has besides been utilised as a unit for the adminis- 
 tration of the Poor Law in some of the Northern 
 Counties, since the time of Charles II 3 . The Borders 
 between England and Scotland had been exposed 
 to constant raids, and were very sparsely inhabited ; 
 after the Union of the Crowns there seemed to be 
 a possibility of reducing this turbulent area to order, 
 and the centres of cultivation and pasture farming, 
 which were formed within the limits of ancient 
 ecclesiastical parishes, were rightly spoken of as 
 Townships. 
 
 We have a few hints which enable us to guess at 
 the methods by which the business of the township 
 
 1 H. B. Simpson, The Office of Constable, in English His- 
 torical Review, x. 627. 
 
 8 As the unit for agricultural purposes, it has recently 
 come into fresh notice. Since 1850, the Enclosure Commis- 
 sioners have found it convenient to take the township as the 
 unit in terms of which they report on any scheme for the 
 enclosure of Commons. Conner, Common Land and Enclosure, 
 270. 
 
 8 Lancashire, Cheshire, Derby, Northumberland, York- 
 shire, Durham, Cumberland and Westmorland. 14 Chas. II, 
 
 C. 12.
 
 I] The Township in England 17 
 
 was conducted in the county of Durham during 
 the fourteenth century. The tenants of Wallsend 
 were summoned to a town meeting in I368 1 , and 
 at Acley in the following year 2 a committee of six 
 was elected for ordering the affairs of the community. 
 These would include the management of the collective 
 agriculture of the place, and this was not by any 
 means an easy matter. The two branches of land 
 management were closely interconnected, though 
 distinct areas were allotted to the open fields on 
 which a course of tillage was carried on continuously, 
 to the meadow land which was used for hay, and 
 the waste which was permanent pasturage. The 
 course of cultivation on the open fields and the 
 quota of work which each man should do were laid 
 down by custom, and there would be little oppor- 
 tunity for revising them unless the lord of the 
 manor consented. But the rights of pasturage on 
 the waste, and the management of the stock, must 
 frequently have given rise to difficult decisions. 
 In many cases it seems that the right to pasture 
 on the waste was reserved to those who had strips 
 in the open fields, and who could not carry on their 
 tillage unless they had the means of pasturing the 
 
 1 Halmota Prioratus Dunelmensis, Surtees Society, LXXXII. 
 (1886), 70. 
 a Ibid. 82. 
 
 c. a
 
 i8 The Township [CH. 
 
 oxen which they contributed to the plough teams of 
 the village. In other cases each cottager could 
 claim a right to put one cow or more upon the 
 common waste. It cannot have been an easy matter 
 to decide what persons had a common right and to 
 settle exactly what kind of stock and what number 
 of beasts each commoner was entitled to put out to 
 feed 1 . There were other difficulties, not about the 
 rights of commoners, but about the management 
 of the stock. It was desirable to have the means 
 of separating any sheep or cattle that were diseased 
 and to be able to segregate the cattle at special 
 times. In one or two cases this communal manage- 
 ment of the live stock on the common waste has 
 lasted till recent times; it is still maintained at 
 Whittlesea in Cambridgeshire; and specimens of 
 the orders, which were made in the seventeenth 
 century, at Cottenham, have been printed 2 . The 
 good management of the village stock was essential 
 
 1 The Durham Halimote Rolls show that questions were 
 raised in the fourteenth century as to whether sufficient 
 pasturage was available for the tenantry (p. 12); and as to 
 one who had no land being prevented from using the common 
 (p. 17). Questions of meadow (Sec. 23), of closes and separate 
 pastures (pp. 24, 40, 54) had to be dealt with, as well as the 
 provision which should be made for oxen (p. 62) and for horses 
 (pp. 22, 69). It was a complicated business. 
 
 z Common Rights at Cottenham and Stretham in Cambridge- 
 shire in Camden Miscellany, xn. (Camden Society, 3rd series, 
 xvin. 1910).
 
 i] The Township in England 19 
 
 to village prosperity. In many cases land was 
 more valuable for purposes of pasture than for 
 tillage; but there is ample reason to believe that 
 during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries insuffi- 
 cient attention was given to this important branch 
 of the economy of the township. 
 
 The great agricultural improvement, which was 
 being introduced during the fifteenth and sixteenth 
 centuries, was the substitution of individual for 
 communal management of land. The man who 
 succeeded in withdrawing his holding from communal 
 control and working at it on his own lines, was able 
 to make much more of it, especially if his holding 
 was large enough to enable him to bring both tillage 
 and the management of stock into his own hands 
 and to make them co-operate. The old common 
 fields were being exhausted; but when a farmer 
 could convert his arable fields into pasture and keep 
 his stock upon them, they recuperated after a few 
 years 1 . Fitzherbert goes fully into the advantages 
 which accrued when this method of convertible 
 husbandry superseded the old cultivation of open 
 fields, and the maintenance of stock on common 
 
 1 Simkovitch, Hay and History, in Polit. Science 
 Quarterly (1913), xxvin. 401. 
 
 2 2
 
 2o The Township [CH. 
 
 waste 1 . In any township where one or two of the 
 more substantial men had succeeded in withdrawing 
 their holdings and their stock from communal 
 management, they would of course have no interest 
 in seeing that good order was maintained on the 
 common waste. As early as the fourteenth century 
 there were complaints that the election of communal 
 officials was falling into disuse 2 ; and as regulation 
 ceased to be effective the privileges of the commoners 
 were more and more abused. We hear complaints, 
 on the one hand, of rich men who put so many 
 cattle on the waste that the common was eaten bare 
 and the poor commoners were seriously wronged; 
 on the other hand, there is ample evidence that 
 undesirables were able to establish themselves as 
 squatters on the common waste 3 . Wherever the 
 chief fault may have lain, there seems to be little 
 doubt that the old system of managing the pasturage 
 had broken down, and that the resources of the 
 commons were being shamefully wasted in the 
 seventeenth century. Generally speaking the com- 
 munal management, not only of the open fields 
 but of the village stock, appears to have come to an 
 
 1 Fitzherbert, Serveyinge 1539, in Certain Ancient Tracts, 
 1777. 
 
 * Victoria County History, Durham, II. 223. 
 
 8 Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce* 
 n. 568.
 
 i] The Township in England 21 
 
 end in most parts of England before the close of 
 the eighteenth century and to have been superseded 
 by individual management of separate farms. 
 
 There were, however, some exceptional cases; 
 in several parts of Cambridgeshire the management 
 of the stock, and especially of the great herd of 
 milk kine, was by far the most important part of 
 the village economy, and the substantial men were 
 eager to maintain effective regulation of the common 
 rights of pasturage. Here the communal element 
 asserted itself more strongly than before. At 
 Stretham and Waterbeach the tenants, acting under 
 manorial authority, carried on an efficient system 
 of regulation; while at Cottenham the commoners 
 succeeded in buying out the lords of the manors 
 altogether so far as the management of the stock 
 was concerned. An agreement was drawn up which 
 was confirmed by the Court of Chancery in 1596 
 by which the commoners secured that the entire 
 management of the stock should be in the hands of 
 their own Order-makers, and this system appears 
 to have been successfully maintained till 1842. 
 In these instances it appears that the township was 
 capable of taking a new lease of life so far as village 
 economy was concerned and of coming into new 
 prominence. It is to be noticed that this revival
 
 22 The Township [CH. 
 
 of the township took place in connection with that 
 branch of husbandry, in regard to which there is 
 most evidence of collective management in New 
 England. 
 
 This revival of the township for agricultural 
 purposes was somewhat exceptional; but there 
 were other causes at work which gave an increased 
 stimulus to local self-government all over the 
 country; new duties were put upon the township, 
 which began to be known as the civil parish. After 
 the Reformation, a revolution took place in ecclesi- 
 astical finance ; the lands, which had been set aside 
 as an endowment to provide means for the repair 
 of the parish church 1 , had often passed into private 
 hands. Necessary church expenses had to be met, 
 under the new order, by raising an income in money, 
 and church ales 2 were a favourite expedient for this 
 purpose, though contributions were also obtained 
 from the parishioners. Communal parochial organi- 
 sation thus came to be charged with the responsibility 
 of controlling local ecclesiastical finance; and this 
 function is still discharged by the parishioners at 
 Easter Vestries. These assemblies were sometimes 
 turbulent, and the practice of constituting Select 
 
 1 S. L. Ware, Elizabethan Parish, 6\ (Johns Hopkins 
 Studies in Historical and Political Science. Series xxvi.). 
 
 2 S. L. Ware, op. cit. 70.
 
 l] The Township in England 23 
 
 Vestries for the more orderly conduct of business 
 was favoured by the Bishops in the early seventeenth 
 century 1 . 
 
 Under the new conditions, too, the resources 
 of local government were taxed by the difficulty 
 of maintaining order, and repressing crime. The 
 great households of the feudal nobility had been 
 broken up and monasteries had been dissolved, 
 and the progress of agricultural improvement was 
 inconsistent with the maintenance of the old 
 economic life in many villages. The parish con- 
 stables were responsible for dealing with vagrancy, 
 and their expenses ultimately fell upon the civil 
 parish 2 ; while the civil parish was also responsible 
 for the maintenance and employment of the poor 8 . 
 This had ceased to be regarded as a matter of 
 religious duty, and as Christian charity; it was 
 coming to be a part of the civil administration of 
 the realm. In the same way the civil parish became 
 responsible for the maintenance of roads, and sur- 
 veyors 4 were appointed to discharge these duties. 
 There was also a great deal of internal police for 
 which the constable, a civil official of the parish, 
 
 1 S. and B. Webb, English Local Government; the Parish 
 and the County, 189, 190. 
 
 2 S. and B. Webb, op. cit. 29. 
 8 39 Elizabeth, c. 3. 
 
 * 18 Elizabeth, c. 10.
 
 24 The Township [CH. 
 
 was primarily responsible. And hence it may be 
 said that the township, especially in those cases 
 where communal management of the stock was 
 preserved, had attained to an importance at the 
 beginning of the seventeenth century which it had 
 never possessed before 1 . After the English Revolu- 
 tion parochial public spirit declined, but it is at 
 least noticeable that, at the beginning of the seven- 
 teenth century, the communal administration of 
 local affairs had attained an importance, which 
 was not traditional and which has not been main- 
 tained, and that under the name of township it 
 was transplanted into New England with a similar 
 organisation and similar responsibilities. 
 
 (iii) The changes in New England. 
 
 The Elizabethan township in England, in so far 
 as it had freed itself from manorial control, and was 
 charged with a great variety of duties, is practically 
 identical with the township as it was planted in New 
 England ; but the colonists were able to introduce 
 a more efficient system of administration by the 
 changes they made in the appointment of officers 
 and the terms on which they served. The annual 
 town meeting could lay down the general principles 
 of management, while details were left to be carried 
 1 S. L. Ware, op. ctt. 64.
 
 l] Administrative Efficiency 25 
 
 out by competent men who were remunerated for 
 the time and trouble they gave to official duties. 
 In the English village the responsibilities of the 
 constable or the churchwarden were undertaken 
 in turn by men who found their only reward in 
 winning the respect of their neighbours for the 
 manner in which they discharged their duties during 
 their term of office. Communal management, with 
 constantly changing administrative officers, was long 
 maintained as the English habit of local government ; 
 and an immense amount of local administrative 
 work was done, not by men of leisure, but by busy 
 men who made time for it and never expected to 
 be remunerated for the days or hours they spent in 
 the service of the public. This system, however, 
 could not secure the highest degree of efficiency, 
 as it was not possible to select the most capable 
 man for any post, nor to take full advantage of 
 the experience he had acquired during a period of 
 office. Public business under this system is neces- 
 sarily carried on by men who are amateurs, as it 
 is only when he enters upon office that the English- 
 man discovers the precise nature of his duties and 
 learns by a hurried experience how they may best be 
 done. 
 
 Increased efficiency of administration cannot,
 
 26 The Township [CH. 
 
 however, be secured without cost, not only in the 
 payment of salaries, which can be reckoned in money, 
 but in the loss that occurs to the community through 
 the diminished opportunities of participating actively 
 in public life. The principle has been forcibly stated 
 by an American writer 1 : "When we accepted 
 democracy as our form of government," he says, 
 "we ranked the political education of the individual 
 as more important than the expert administration 
 of government." But so far as the New England 
 township goes, the political education which is 
 given to each man who is willing to take office, by 
 embracing an opportunity of serving his country, 
 has been neglected. Even in modern times in 
 England when parish affairs are relatively unim- 
 portant because so much is done by the paid official 
 of the central government, we can see how educative 
 a period of office is, as regards the individual who 
 undertakes it ; and we can feel that this must have 
 been far more true in Elizabethan times when the 
 parish was such an important organ for local govern- 
 ment. It is chiefly in ecclesiastical matters that 
 the communal activities of the township survive, 
 in the Easter Vestry. The churchwarden, who 
 undertakes office for a year, knows that he is 
 personally responsible to the parishioners who 
 1 J. J. Chapman, Causes and Consequences, 133.
 
 i] Experience of public duties 27 
 
 appointed him, and he is anxious to do his routine 
 duties so as to merit their approval. In regard to 
 any large expenditure, such as substantial repairs 
 or the purchase of a heating apparatus or an organ, 
 he knows that he will have to defend himself against 
 criticism, and he is anxious to form his opinion for 
 himself, and to try and judge on the advice which 
 may be given him by various men of experience. 
 He is not willing to rely on the guidance of any 
 individual however skilled, and to follow him 
 blindly, for he is an empiricist pure and simple. He 
 thus becomes for time to come an excellent critic 
 of the manner in which his successors discharge 
 duties with which his experience has rendered him 
 familiar. 
 
 It is also to be noticed that the man who enters 
 on an office for a short period is likely to have 
 initiative. He has not got into a rut, or to be 
 the creature of routine, as so often happens to 
 capable servants ; and he will often desire that his 
 term of office should be rendered memorable by the 
 introduction of a definite improvement which he 
 has thought out and carried through. 
 
 The cumulative effects of a cause that is con- 
 stantly in operation may be very great, and it is 
 not fanciful to suppose that the widely diffused
 
 28 The Township [CH. I 
 
 political education which has been given by parti- 
 cipation in parish politics, has, for good or for evil, 
 something to do with English national character; 
 it has shaped the desire to be well thought of by 
 neighbours. The aim of training children in such 
 a way that they shall preserve the standing of the 
 family in the community, is not unwholesome. 
 Such ambitions are guards against anti-social 
 tendencies of every kind; even though they may 
 prevent a man from throwing his whole heart and 
 soul into his personal success in his career: to be 
 willing to serve the public gratuitously for a time 
 is a mark of public spirit. 
 
 The effect of this personal education in political 
 affairs is also seen in the English dislike of any 
 divorce between theory and practice, and in par- 
 ticular of the suspicion with which men of theory 
 who have no local knowledge are regarded. This 
 has had a harmful result in the undue disparagement 
 of science, which is so widely current in England, 
 but it is interesting testimony as to the strength 
 of the Englishman's determination to think for 
 himself.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 TOWN PLANNING 1 . 
 
 (i) The growth of English and of American towns. 
 
 Nothing strikes the European visitor to America 
 as more noticeable than the broad and regular streets 
 with which the cities are laid out and the contrast 
 must be more remarkable to those habituated to 
 New York or Washington who find themselves for 
 the first time in London or York. But though the 
 city life of America has been developed so rapidly 
 and on such an enormous scale, it is by no means an 
 independent creation. The older cities themselves 
 bear witness to a close connection with England. 
 On the one hand we can trace a parallelism between 
 the early growth of urban life in England in the 
 time of the Danes, and the beginnings of town life 
 in America, and on the other we find cities on the 
 Atlantic coast which contain relics that have their 
 origin in ancient civilisation. There were great 
 1 Drexel Institute, Philadelphia.
 
 30 Town Planning [CH. 
 
 cities with magnificent public buildings in Greece, 
 and city life played an important part in the Roman 
 Empire; it is worth while to try and trace the 
 precise links by which the town planning of the 
 ancient world was shaped in England, and the 
 manner in which it was transmitted from England to 
 North America. Rural life in America bears the 
 impress of transplantation from rural England, 
 and urban life has features which connect it through 
 England with the ancient world. 
 
 There are one or two English towns which show 
 that they originated on the site which had been 
 occupied by a Roman city and in which the main 
 outlines have been perpetuated. The normal scheme 
 of these cities corresponds with that of the Roman 
 camps, such as Ardoch and Birrens, which lie 
 north of Hadrian's Wall, in a region which was 
 subdued by the Roman forces, but not permanently 
 utilised by the Romans for agriculture. These 
 camps, which had wooden buildings, are rectangular 
 with one main street through the town from the 
 middle of each end, crossed at right angles by 
 another which ran from side to side. Lincoln and 
 Chester, among other English towns, exhibit Roman 
 remains which show that cities of this military type 
 formerly stood on the ground they occupy. When 
 an English town grew on such a site it conformed
 
 ii] Physical Conditions 31 
 
 to the old lines; but it may be doubted whether 
 the civic life of the Empire survived as a living 
 tradition at any centre in England; and there was 
 little occasion for towns to grow up, till the revival 
 of commerce which took place under the Danish 
 influence, and the better organisation of home 
 defence which was called for by their invasions. 
 There is ample evidence of a reappearance of town 
 life in England in Danish times, partly at centres 
 which the Romans had found convenient, and 
 partly round new centres of population. The 
 physical conditions which had rendered London and 
 York important places in Roman times, led to 
 their resuscitation as soon as trade began to reappear ; 
 and the Benedictine monasteries, which had been 
 founded in so many parts of the country, became 
 considerable centres of trade. The erection of their 
 buildings and furnishing of their churches, required 
 organisation of industry on a considerable scale, 
 and the importation of materials and wares from 
 abroad. As places where hospitality could be found, 
 they were frequented by travellers, and the monks 
 took the opportunity of organising and directing 
 the work of others rather than of being dependent 
 for sustenance on their own manual labours 1 . 
 
 1 Cunningham, Organisation of the Masons' Craft in England 
 in Proceedings of the British Academy, vi.
 
 32 Town Planning [CH. 
 
 Glastonbury, Bury and Peterborough were all towns 
 which consisted of an Abbey and its dependents. 
 
 There were also towns which grew round a castle 
 held by the King, or some great Thane, and occupied 
 by his dependents. Of this class are the Midland 
 Boroughs, which were built by Edward the Elder 
 and the Lady of Mercia; and many similar towns 
 began to grow up during the Norman and Angevin 
 Period, when so many new castles were erected. 
 There were of course cases such as Carlisle, and 
 Norwich, where an abbey and castle were contiguous, 
 and where the monastic and military elements, taking 
 advantage of the relics of Roman roads and Roman 
 cities, co-operated in the growth of an English town. 
 
 These elements, which were so influential in 
 connection with the beginnings of town life in 
 England, may be said to have been entirely wanting 
 in the New World. There were neither Roman 
 remains nor monastic requirements to be taken 
 into account; but yet the beginnings of town life 
 in England before the Conquest were to some 
 extent parallel with the origin of towns, many 
 centuries later, in America. Neither in England 
 (apart from the Roman sites) nor in America at 
 first, was there any planning of towns on a recognised 
 scheme. Each populous centre grew according to 
 the convenience of the situation and the require-
 
 n] Growth of Towns 33 
 
 ments of the inhabitants. Both in England and in 
 New England, there were towns which depended 
 chiefly on the fishing industry, and in which the 
 inhabitants found that access to the shore was 
 a matter of importance. Both in England and 
 in New England, there were towns which were 
 primarily dependent on agriculture, and where 
 access to the common and to the fields was the 
 first consideration. There are not a few English 
 towns at the present day of which the very irre- 
 gularity testifies to the conditions to which they 
 owe their origin; this is most obvious in seaside 
 towns; but in an inland town like Norwich, the 
 curve of the main street is a constant reminder of 
 the fact that the castle was a chief element in the 
 growth of the city, and that the houses of dependents 
 clustered round its base. There is doubtless similar 
 evidence, in the older parts of New York and Boston, 
 which testifies to their origin and the source of 
 their prosperity. 
 
 While there are these similarities, in the beginning 
 and growth of towns in England and in America, 
 there is one striking and significant contrast. The 
 principal feature in the plan of an English town was 
 the market-place, to which supplies were regularly 
 brought and in which the industrial population 
 
 c. 3
 
 34 Town Planning [CH. 
 
 procured food and materials, and disposed of their 
 wares. English towns were commercial in their 
 origin; for the castle or abbey, where population 
 clustered, was a centre of a local demand for butter, 
 eggs and other rural produce ; and as the industrial 
 side of town life became more developed, there was 
 a demand for corn which could not be supplied 
 from the town fields. But the inhabitants of New 
 England towns were, for the most part, independent, 
 so far as their habitual requirements were concerned, 
 and there was no need for a weekly market at first. 
 The trade which called American towns into being 
 was occasional, when a ship arrived and opportuni- 
 ties offered of buying foreign goods or sending 
 commodities abroad. The trade of an American 
 town was analogous to that of a mediaeval 1 fair 
 rather than to that of an English market town. 
 The market-place was of increasing importance 
 throughout the Middle Ages; and the great ex- 
 tensions of English towns, which took place in 
 connection with the Crusades, are characterised 
 by large open market-places 2 . 
 
 1 Cunningham, Christianity and Economic Science, 46. 
 
 8 Many of these areas have been blocked up by subsequent 
 encroachments. Those who had temporary stalls obtained 
 leave to replace them with permanent wooden buildings. 
 This has occurred very generally in regard to the shambles 
 or butchers' shops. In some cases the wooden rows which 
 replaced the movable stalls have given place to permanent
 
 li] Market Places 35 
 
 During the Middle Ages the market of a town 
 was not merely a place where individuals met to 
 drive their own bargains and have a deal ; it was a 
 public institution for regulating the trade of the 
 town in the interests of its prosperity as a community. 
 The market cross was in itself a symbol of authority 1 
 to enforce just dealing, and it was important that 
 the use of standard weights and measures should 
 be prescribed and enforced. There was provision 
 for the official weighing of goods ; and the custody 
 of the public beam was sometimes associated with 
 the levying of customs, the weigh-house was also 
 a toll booth. This official supervision was of advan- 
 tage in guarding against fraud and facilitating 
 transactions between man and man, but there was 
 also much market regulation which was intended to 
 give effect to a definite civic policy, and to lay down 
 rules which should not only guarantee honest 
 dealing, but should also make directly for the 
 welfare and the prosperity of the town as a whole. 
 
 stone buildings and narrow rows of shops, which are divided 
 by little alleys. These encroachments axe particularly 
 noticeable at Ludlow, in Shropshire, but there are many 
 towns where the booths that have clustered round the 
 Town Hall detract from the dignity and spaciousness of the 
 original market-place. 
 
 1 This is specially noticeable hi Scotland. On the con- 
 nection of Scottish Market Grosses with the Perron at Liege 
 see Scottish Historical Review, xm. 174. 
 
 32
 
 36 Town Planning [CH. 
 
 The townsmen believed that they were better 
 served when there were opportunities of bargaining 
 in one definite place; and they could look round 
 from stall to stall and compare various offers ; supply 
 and demand adjusted themselves more publicly and 
 therefore more fairly. They were suspicious of 
 the forestallers who bought up goods before they 
 were exposed in the market-place, and of the 
 regrator who made speculative purchases with the 
 view of selling at some future time, or in some 
 other place. They were anxious that the man who 
 wanted to use the products of the neighbourhood, 
 or the fish that was landed at his own door, should 
 have a preference in purchasing as compared with 
 those who lived in distant places. The Elizabethan 
 regulations for markets show a special care for the 
 wants of the poor consumer ; and those who bought 
 in small quantities, whether corn for food, or wool 
 as a material for their industry, were enabled to 
 enjoy the pick of the market. The care which was 
 taken of the consumers as a body was also exercised 
 as municipal life developed, and the English towns 
 became centres of industry or foreign trade. The 
 spirit of civic patriotism was strong, and every 
 effort was made that the prosperity of the town as a 
 whole and its reputation and success should be 
 borne in mind, and that private convenience should
 
 n] Market Regulation 37 
 
 be habitually ignored where public interests were 
 concerned. The whole trading life of every English 
 town was dominated by constant reminders of the 
 duty of regulating business transactions so that 
 private gain might be subordinated to the good of 
 the community; and a basis was thus laid, which 
 rendered it comparatively easy to induce traders to 
 take account of larger considerations of national 
 policy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 
 and to introduce humanitarian legislation in the 
 nineteenth. The prominence of the market-place 
 in every English town is a testimony to the import- 
 ance of the market as an institution ; New England 
 towns do not afford similar evidence of the market- 
 place as a salient feature in the beginning or the 
 growth of the town. The market-place, on which 
 Faneuil Hall and the Quincey market stand, was 
 not part of the original site of Boston, but was 
 reclaimed from the shore. As late as 1734 the 
 inhabitants disliked having to "resort to localities 
 and preferred to be served at their houses in the 
 old way 1 ". Where such habits existed there was 
 little room for frequenting the market as an 
 institution, and little attempt could be made to 
 enforce a civic policy in the public interest. The 
 freedom of the individual to carry out a deal in the 
 1 S. H. Drake, Old Landmarks of Boston, 133.
 
 38 Town Planning [CH. 
 
 way which suited his own convenience and without 
 reference to other considerations obtained full 
 scope, and the belief that this is beneficial for the 
 community itself, has come to be regarded as 
 axiomatic in America to a much larger extent than 
 has ever been true in England 1 . The keenness of 
 the American business-man is the natural outcome 
 of freedom for private dealing which has characterised 
 American towns from their beginnings. 
 
 (ii) Building Plots for Private Houses. 
 
 There was no conscious influence from the ancient 
 world in the growth of English towns before the 
 Norman Conquest, but an entirely new era opened 
 during the Period of the Crusades. These great 
 expeditions brought about an immense development 
 of commercial activity; there was much business 
 to be done in connection with the equipment and 
 transport of troops, and Italian cities like Venice 
 and Genoa entered into a keen rivalry for securing 
 the main share in this business; the movement 
 not only gave a temporary stimulus but had per- 
 manent effects as well. The peoples of the West 
 
 1 There was less enforcement of civic policy in Scottish 
 than in English market towns, and freedom for individual 
 trading had more scope to the North than to the South of 
 the Tweed.
 
 n] Plots for Private Houses 39 
 
 were brought into direct contact with the Levant 
 and the countries round it ; they had access to the 
 wares and products which were supplied from the 
 East, and they also came into contact with the 
 great heritage of civilised life which survived in 
 the Byzantine Empire. The barbarian invaders 
 had devastated the West, but Constantinople had 
 escaped their attacks, and the arts of life, as they 
 had developed in Greek cities, and the organisation 
 which characterised the Roman Empire, were 
 preserved as a living thing to impress the minds of 
 Norman and Frankish Crusaders and to excite them 
 to imitation. 
 
 This imitation is very obvious in regard to 
 military affairs; the science of fortification, as 
 understood in the ancient world, was illustrated 
 in the defence of Constantinople; and came to be 
 applied in the great strongholds which were erected 
 in Normandy and on the Borders of Wales. But 
 a permanent mark was left on the arts of peace, 
 no less than on those of war. The stimulus that 
 was given to commerce, and the perception on the 
 part of English Kings of the advantage they might 
 derive from developing commerce, brought about 
 the foundation of many new towns, both in Britain 
 and on the Continent ; and led to the rapid expan- 
 sion of many existing towns by the addition of large
 
 4o Town Planning [CH. 
 
 suburbs. Edward I founded villef ranches in Gascony 
 as well as in England ; and other potentates followed 
 his example. In these new towns and suburbs it 
 is easy to discern a deliberate plan, and the conscious 
 adoption of definite schemes of arrangement. The 
 most, perfect existing examples are at Montpazier 
 and Carcassonne. But in other towns, which were 
 founded or extended at this period, it is easy to 
 recognise that the surveyor had a definite scheme 
 in mind, even though he did not follow it pedantic- 
 ally, but adapted it to the peculiarities of site or 
 other local conditions. It is plain that during this 
 period there was a revival of the art of town planning, 
 as it had been practised in the ancient world and 
 in cities with which the Crusaders had become 
 familiar. 
 
 Long centuries before, when Alexander the Great 
 established Greek dominance over the Eastern Medi- 
 terranean, a great many new cities were founded; 
 his chief adviser, in laying out roads in Antioch, 
 Alexandria and other places, had been Hippodamus 
 of Miletus; and the special feature which differen- 
 tiated his work from that of earlier surveyors was 
 the completeness with which his plans were thought 
 out. Not only did he arrange for the grouping of 
 the public buildings, but he laid down a regular
 
 n] Plots for Private Houses 41 
 
 scheme for the whole town with measured spaces for 
 all the private houses ; this was also a characteristic 
 feature of the towns which were founded in Western 
 Europe during the Crusading Period 1 . Montpazier 
 is an excellent illustration of one type; it was 
 rectangular but differed in many ways from the 
 scheme which is preserved in the Roman camp, 
 there are three main avenues running lengthwise 
 and four cross streets which divide the city into 
 twenty blocks. One of these blocks was left for the 
 market-place, and one was occupied by the church, 
 but the rest were laid out in lots on which private 
 houses could be built 2 . Modification of the same 
 scheme is recognisable in St Andrews which was 
 founded by the Bishop in the thirteenth century 
 by inducing a colony from Berwick to settle there 3 . 
 There is also evidence of a definite plan in Salisbury 
 which was bodily removed from its ancient site by 
 Bishop Poore in the early part of the thirteenth 
 century; while Winchelsea was built on similar 
 lines by Edward I. 
 
 Great expansions of existing towns occurred in 
 the Eastern Counties, which were such a flourishing 
 
 1 Cunningham, The corrupt following of Hippodamus of 
 Miletus at Cambridge, in Cambridge Antiquarian Society 
 Transactions, N.S. in. 
 
 8 J. H, Parker, Domestic Architecture, II. 144. 
 
 9 Scott, Berwick, 6.
 
 42 Town Planning [CH. 
 
 part of England at that period ; and are noticeable 
 in Bury and Norwich as well as at Peterborough 
 and Cambridge. These town expansions have very 
 extended market-places; but their characteristic 
 feature is the regularity with which the lots for 
 private houses and shops are laid out. The houses 
 usually stood with their gables towards the street; 
 inns and larger buildings were double houses which 
 contained an interior court-yard; many of these 
 remain unchanged to the present day 1 . The single 
 houses were also provided with means of access to 
 the workshop or yard which lay behind each house. 
 Beside the door from the street into the house 
 itself there was an alley which communicated with 
 the premises behind; and this type of house may 
 be said to have become universal in English towns 
 during the later Middle Ages, and to have held its 
 own until the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries 2 ; 
 this was the ordinary arrangement of shops and 
 dwelling places in an English town, at the time 
 when the plantation of the Atlantic coast was being 
 
 1 The frontage of the Angel at Grantham is striking 
 though the house itself has been renovated. The Red Lion 
 of Banbury is a good example of a type that is fast dis- 
 appearing. 
 
 a In many cases, as in Boston in Lincolnshire, or with 
 the rows in Yarmouth or the closes in Edinburgh, these 
 alleys were public thoroughfares between two houses, and not 
 private passages.
 
 li] Plots for Private Houses 43 
 
 carried on rapidly. In more recent times provision 
 has been made for access to the yard behind a house 
 by back streets and mews lanes ; and there has been 
 no need to provide an additional entrance from 
 the front. When the new town of Edinburgh was 
 founded it was possible to dispense with the narrow 
 passages which were so characteristic of the older 
 parts of the city. 
 
 Carefully measured plots were laid out for private 
 dwelling houses in American towns, as they became 
 more populous, and the streets must have been very 
 similar in appearance to those of the seventeenth 
 century English towns. In 1795 there were in 
 Boston, in Massachusetts, ranges of wooden buildings 
 all situated with one end towards the street 1 , and 
 the alley at the side of the houses was a common 
 feature; it has not even yet entirely disappeared 
 from the older parts of New York 2 or Philadelphia 
 or Boston, though it has long since ceased to be 
 convenient for the ordinary conditions of town life. 
 This feature may certainly be regarded as a relic 
 of the method of laying out private houses which 
 existed in ancient times, and which has been 
 
 1 S. H. Drake, Old Landmarks of Boston, ix. 252. 
 
 1 A similar method of laying out plots for private houses 
 had been adopted in the Low Countries, and may have been 
 transmitted from Holland to New Amsterdam.
 
 44 Town Planning [CH. 
 
 transmitted to the New World in the form in which 
 it was adopted and perpetuated in England. 
 
 (iii) The Fire of London. 
 
 During the later Middle Ages there was little 
 occasion for the exercise of the art of town planning 
 in England. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries 
 were a time of civic decay. There are indeed not a 
 few beautiful buildings which were erected by the 
 members of the oligarchies who were coming to 
 control the trade and the government of the towns 1 ; 
 but there was little demand for the laying out of 
 new quarters. Enterprising artisans were inclined 
 to steal away from the corporate towns to villages 
 where they had greater freedom to pursue their 
 crafts; the migration might sometimes lead to the 
 plantation of an industrial hamlet, like Broadway 
 in Worcestershire; but there was no occasion to 
 give attention to the laying out of urban areas. 
 Even though the trade and wealth of London were 
 growing at the expense of provincial towns, and 
 some of the gardens and open spaces within the 
 city were being built over, no encouragement was 
 given for the extension of suburbs. Indeed the 
 wealth and political power of the city were so great 
 
 1 For example the Guild Hall at York and St Mary's Hall 
 at Coventry.
 
 n] The Fire of London 45 
 
 that James I and Charles I had reason to regard 
 this civic community as a dangerous rival and took 
 steps to discourage its expansion. Hence there 
 was little opportunity for applying the knowledge 
 of ancient architecture, which had been opened up 
 by the Renaissance, to civic purposes in England, 
 until the clearing of a large part of the area of 
 London by the Fire of 1666 rendered it necessary 
 to set about the rebuilding of the capital of the 
 country. Owing to the eagerness of the population 
 to rebuild their houses and resume their businesses 
 as soon as possible, the opportunity of reconstructing 
 London on entirely new lines was lost 1 . But none 
 the less the efforts which were made by national 
 and municipal authorities rendered the time of the 
 Fire an important era in the history of town planning 
 in England. 
 
 Those who regard the history of England from 
 a purely military standpoint are inclined to contrast 
 the greatness of Cromwell, supported by a well 
 disciplined army and possessing an excellent fleet, 
 with the decadence of the Monarchy under Charles 
 II ; but when account is taken of the arts of peace 
 we see what an extraordinary development of 
 
 1 W. Besant, London in the Time of the Stuarts, 269.
 
 46 Town Planning [CH. 
 
 national life characterised the latter half of the 
 seventeenth century. There was a revival of 
 domestic industry and foreign commerce; and the 
 foundations of the English Empire both in the East 
 and the West were secured by the acquisition of 
 Bombay and New York. There was also a remark- 
 able movement for bringing science to bear on the 
 development of national resources. The founders 
 of the Royal Society were not only eager investi- 
 gators but public-spirited men ; a body of intelligent 
 opinion had been organised and could be directed 
 towards the solution of the problem of the rebuilding 
 of London in such a fashion that the danger 
 of the recurrence of a similar disaster should be 
 minimised. 
 
 "Some intelligent Persons," as the biographer 
 of Wren records, "went farther, and thought it 
 highly requisite, the City in the Restoration should 
 rise with that Beauty, by the Straightness and 
 Regularity of Buildings, and Convenience for Com- 
 merce, by the well disposing of Streets and publick 
 Places, and the Opening of Wharfs, &c. which the 
 excellent Situation, Wealth and Grandeur of the 
 Metropolis of England did justly deserve; in respect 
 also of the Rank she bore with all other trading 
 Cities of the World, of which tho' she was before 
 one of the richest in Estate and Dowry, yet unques-
 
 n] The Fire of London 47 
 
 tionably the least beautiful. Informe, ingens, cut 
 lumen ademptum. 
 
 "In order therefore to a proper Reformation, 
 Dr. Wren (pursuant to the royal Commands) imme- 
 diately after the Fire, took an exact Survey of the 
 whole Area and Confines of the Burning, having 
 traced over, with great Trouble and Hazard, the 
 great Plain of Ashes and Ruins; and designed a 
 Plan or Model of a new City, in which the Deformity 
 and Inconveniencies of the old Town were remedied, 
 by the inlarging the Streets and Lanes, and carrying 
 them as near parallel to one another as might be; 
 avoiding, if compatible with greater Conveniences, 
 all acute Angles; by seating all the parochial 
 Churches conspicuous and insular; by forming the 
 most publick Places into large Piazza's, the Centers 
 of eight Ways; by uniting the Halls of the twelve 
 chief Companies, into one regular Square annexed 
 to Guild-hall', by making a commodious Key on 
 the whole Bank of the River, from Blackfriars to 
 the Tower' 1 " 
 
 Wren was not alone in this matter, however, 
 and the fact that a plan survives, which is somewhat 
 similar in general character and which was drawn 
 by Sir John Evelyn, shows that there was a great 
 
 1 Wren, ParentaHa, No. III. Sect. n. pp. 267, 268.
 
 48 Town Planning [CH. 
 
 deal of interest in town planning. The topic was 
 so much in the air that William Penn, who returned 
 to London in 1667, could hardly escape its influence ; 
 and when he was able to take an active part in 
 colonial enterprise it is not surprising to find that 
 he made a careful plan for the city which was to 
 be founded in Pennsylvania. In 1683 he published 
 an account of the city of Philadelphia which shows 
 a design of rectangular streets with regular blocks, 
 and closely resembles the scheme which was adopted 
 when Philadelphia was eventually laid out. The 
 founding of Philadelphia appears to be a turning 
 point in the history of the development of towns 
 in the United States ; till that time they had grown, 
 but from that time onwards the desirability of 
 having a regular scheme has been fully recognised, 
 and the personality of Penn seems to link this 
 important advance in the development of American 
 cities with the revived interest in town planning 
 which had arisen in connection with the recon- 
 struction of London after the Great Fire. 
 
 An interesting feature, both in Wren's and 
 Evelyn's plans, had found no place in Montpazier 
 and the other crusading towns; the inclusion of a 
 scheme for radiating streets was a new departure. 
 Wren had planned that there should be radiating
 
 li] The Fire of London 49 
 
 streets from the Piazza in which the Exchange 
 was to stand; he intended to have another Piazza 
 about the middle of Fleet Street, which was to be 
 the centre of eight ways, and these were to open up 
 convenient thoroughfares and striking vistas. This 
 radiating plan appears to characterise the Renais- 
 sance as distinguished from the Mediaeval Period ; it 
 has a partial application in the streets which radiate 
 from the Piazza del Popolo at Rome; it seems, 
 however, to have been first adopted completely 
 and carried out systematically in the fortified city 
 of Palma Nuovo, which was founded by the Venetians 
 in 1594 to be a bulwark against invasion either 
 by the Austrians or other enemies 1 . Dr Edward 
 Browne 2 who visited Palma Nuovo in the latter 
 part of the seventeenth century describes it thus 
 "In the centre of the city is fixed a standard over 
 a Triple Well, in the midst of a sexangular Piazza, 
 from whence a man may see the three gates and 
 six streets quite through the town. The Piazza is 
 beautified with the front of the Domo church, divers 
 statues and an obelisk much gilded.... This is at 
 present esteemed one of the noblest fortifications 
 in Europe begun by the Venetians 1594, and is a 
 
 1 J. Bleau, Nouveau Theatre d'ltalie (1724), Plan xxxvm. 
 a Brief Account of some travels in divers parts of Europe 
 (1685), 84. 
 
 c. 4
 
 50 Town Planning [CH. n 
 
 notable bulwark of their State and Italy, for this 
 way the Huns and barbarous nations passed into 
 Italy." 
 
 The radiating plan appears thus to have been 
 invented with a view to the practical convenience 
 for defence, and the same general design was adopted 
 at Charleroi in 1666. It is rare in the Old World, 
 and the most magnificent example of it is found 
 in the streets which radiate from the Capitol at 
 Washington, but it was not a wholly new creation 
 there. Wren had recognised its suitability for the 
 purposes of civic life and it came to be an important 
 element in his design for rebuilding London. It 
 seems not impossible that the radiating plan, which 
 was adopted for Annapolis 1 and which gives a 
 unique character to the city of Washington, may 
 have reached America through the tradition of 
 Wren's work rather than through any other channel. 
 
 1 The influence of Wren on the plan of Annapolis, and 
 on the design of the State House there, is discussed by 
 Mr Frank B. Mayer in his Handbook of Annapolis, 1888 
 (Anne Arundel Historical Society).
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PUBLIC BUILDINGS 1 
 
 (i) Monuments of Civic Patriotism 
 in England. 
 
 Owing to the increase of national consciousness 
 and imperialist sentiment, civic patriotism is com- 
 paratively unimportant in modern England, but the 
 monuments which remain testify to the strength of 
 this feeling in mediaeval times and during the sixteenth 
 and seventeenth centuries. An extraordinary num- 
 ber of beautiful buildings were erected for municipal 
 purposes of different kinds during the Middle Ages ; 
 and many of them still remain to help us to realise 
 what a variety of duties were undertaken by public 
 authority, and how as time passed and towns grew 
 in importance there was necessarily a differentiation 
 of function and a change in the character of public 
 
 1 Johns Hopkins University. Baltimore. 
 
 42
 
 52 Public Buildings [CH. 
 
 edifices. There are English towns in which one 
 building served for all the requirements of municipal 
 and commercial life; while there are other places 
 where special structures were reared for the purposes 
 of trade, and these had nothing to do with the 
 administration of justice or the maintenance of 
 order. 
 
 The Guild Hall of Much Wenlock still suffices for 
 public requirements of many kinds: it has a long 
 history, as the stone work and some of the wood 
 work probably date from the fifteenth or the latter 
 part of the fourteenth century, though a large part 
 of the present building was reconstructed in 1577. 
 It comprises a market hall and a prison, the Court 
 House and a Mayor's parlour; it provides, in one 
 picturesque wooden building, accommodation for 
 everything that is needed for the life of the town. 
 On the level of the street there is an open arcade, 
 where the market is held; and women, who bring 
 in baskets of eggs or poultry for sale, can sit with 
 some shelter from the weather. There is a small 
 prison built of massive stone at one end of the 
 arcade, and one of the wooden uprights has been 
 used as a whipping post. The Court House is 
 entered by a flight of steps at the opposite end of 
 the building from the prison; it is a beautifully 
 furnished room, with an entrance into the Mayor's
 
 in] Monuments of Civic Patriotism 53 
 
 parlour which stands above the prison 1 . This public 
 building, which subserved so many purposes, seems 
 to represent the primitive Guild Hall or Town Hall 2 ; 
 and when we remember how much English municipal 
 life was affected by continental influence it is not 
 surprising there are analogies which suggest that 
 this type of public building was not a native creation. 
 Colonnaded market-places had been a familiar feature 
 throughout the Roman Empire, but there is no 
 reason to believe that any of them had survived 
 in Britain. The suggestion of this type of building 
 probably came from some part of the Empire where 
 city life had not been interrupted 3 . It would be 
 natural enough that, when towns were being laid 
 out in accordance with a recognised scheme of town 
 planning, public buildings should also be copied on 
 English soil. 
 
 1 The court-room contains an instrument of punishment 
 which has fallen into desuetude, the stocks : the set at Much 
 Wenlock are of an unusual type as they are set on wheels 
 so that the delinquent could be dragged round the town. 
 
 8 The Town Hall built at Bridgnorth , in 1 650, was apparently 
 intended to serve both for the magistrates and for market 
 purposes. So too the Guild Hall at Bath (1625). The open 
 loggia was a favourite feature with Inigo Jones and other 
 seventeenth century architects. 
 
 8 The ground-plan of the Much Wenlock Town Hall is very 
 similar indeed to that of the Palace of the Podesta at Orvieto, 
 a beautiful stone building which was erected in the twelfth 
 century. Verdier et Cattois, Architecture civile et domestique 
 au moyen dge, I. 57.
 
 54 Public Buildings [CH. 
 
 Before the seventeenth century, the differentia- 
 tion of function had gone a considerable way and 
 separate buildings were provided for different civic 
 purposes. It is very common to find the Court- 
 house, with the prison beneath, as a building by 
 itself ; while other provision was made for the holding 
 of the market. There is an excellent example at 
 Winchelsea in Sussex of a Court House with the 
 prison beneath, as well as at Totnes in Devonshire 
 and Great Yarmouth. In many cases, however, 
 other provision was made for the safety of the 
 prisoners and they might be confined in a gate- 
 house, like that which formerly stood on Bedford 
 Bridge and was associated with the name of John 
 Bunyan: the civic institutions for enforcing law 
 and order were generally housed apart from the 
 market shelter with which they had been so closely 
 associated at Much Wenlock. 
 
 The importance of civic patriotism in super- 
 vising and controlling commercial transactions 
 within the town had been shown in the laying out 
 of market-places, and it is still further exemplified 
 in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by the 
 elaboration of the buildings which were provided 
 in connection with markets. The market cross was 
 the centre round which the trade of the town was 
 conducted, and it also was a position from which
 
 in] Monuments of Civic Patriotism 55 
 
 public announcements and proclamations were read. 
 The Carlisle cross (1682), though ornamented, 
 retains the character of a shaft standing on steps; 
 but in other places the cross expanded so as to 
 provide a shelter for the butter-women and their 
 wares. At Mildenhall in Suffolk, there is a wooden 
 penthouse round the cross, while similar structures 
 at Shepton Mallet and at Cheddar are built of stone. 
 Stone shelters were occasionally elaborated into 
 beautiful crosses of which examples may be seen at 
 Salisbury (1365) and Chichester (1500). In some 
 cases, it was found convenient to make a room above 
 the shelter; to this access could be obtained by a 
 spiral staircase, or else by a ladder 1 . Wooden 
 buildings of this type appear to have been not uncom- 
 mon in former days 2 , and one of them remains at 
 Wymondham in Norfolk 3 . The old stone cross at 
 York was raised on five steps; and a penthouse, 
 
 1 The cross at North Walsham, which dates from the 
 time of Edward VI, has an upper storey which is only accessible 
 by ladder. 
 
 2 These crosses have been replaced by buildings in stone or 
 brick at Barnard Castle, and at Burwell, Lines. 
 
 8 The cross at Dunster has dormer windows in the roof 
 of the shelter, but there is no attic chamber. This cross was 
 frequented by women who sold yarn to travelling merchants. 
 The wooden building at Ledbury dates from the end of the 
 fifteenth century ; it has an open loggia below ; and the 
 upper storey, which could only be entered by means of a 
 ladder, was used as a wool store. The present spiral stair- 
 case was added in 1860.
 
 56 Public Buildings [CH. 
 
 resting on eight wooden pillars, had been erected 
 round it : this was removed, however, and a market 
 house with a loggia below and a hall above was 
 built in 1705 *. About the same time, what must 
 apparently have been the most remarkable of all 
 the English market crosses, was built at Wakefield. 
 The upper storey contained a large room with a 
 cupola, and was lighted by a lantern; it stood on 
 eight Doric columns and was entered by a spiral 
 staircase, while the loggia below served as a market 
 shelter 2 . Other market houses, however, were 
 erected quite independently of the market cross. 
 The spacious market house at Shrewsbury (1596) 
 provided for a corn market in the open space below, 
 and the cloth market was held in the hall above 3 . 
 
 The Pilgrim Fathers were familiar with the civic 
 patriotism of Englishmen in the seventeenth century 
 and with the beautiful buildings which were being 
 erected at public expense or by the munificence of 
 private citizens 4 for civic institutions ; but they had 
 
 1 Drake, Eboracum, 324. a Allen, County of York, m. 278. 
 
 * T. Phillips, Shrewsbury (1779), 133, 134. The old 
 Buttercross was removed in 1705 ; and a large stone arcade 
 was built on its site. A reservoir in connection with the water 
 supply was subsequently constructed as an upper storey. 
 
 4 The Town Hall at Rothwell was built by Sir T. Tresham. 
 The inscription on the fragments of the market cross at Ipswich 
 shows that the executors of Benjamin Osbourne who intended 
 to leave ^50 for the restoration of the cross could only pay ^44.
 
 in] Monuments of Civic Patriotism 57 
 
 little opportunity to transplant this habit of mind 
 to their new homes; similar sentiment was a later 
 development in America. There were few if any 
 markets and there was little occasion for market 
 crosses or market shelters or market houses 1 . It 
 was hardly to be expected that any building of the 
 type of Shrewsbury market house should be erected 
 in the New World, and it is remarkable that the 
 building in Boston which was intended for quite 
 different purposes should have a similar character. 
 The old State House, which was built in 1748 as a 
 Government Office for conducting the business of 
 the Province, is curiously similar, both in its position 
 and arrangement, to an English market house. 
 There is, indeed, no loggia that could be used as a 
 market shelter, but the spiral staircase and the 
 lantern are features which recall an English market 
 house. In erecting a building for the government 
 of the province, the authorities fell back on a model 
 which had been gradually developed from a market 
 cross. As it stands it is unique, and it has an 
 added interest when we recognise the stages in the 
 evolution of the type it represents. 
 
 1 It is said that there is a market house at Shepperton 
 in Virginia. There was at one time a clerk of the market at 
 Maiden, Mass. (Corey, History of Maiden, 353).
 
 58 Public Buildings [CH. 
 
 (ii) Meeting Houses. 
 
 The public buildings in New England in the 
 early colonial days were adapted to the requirements 
 of rural communities, rather than modelled on 
 civic buildings in England. The principal public 
 building in a New England town was the Meeting 
 House, which was available for town assemblies, 
 either for religious or secular purposes. The town 
 church, as it appears in New England, had very 
 little resemblance to the parish churches which 
 remain as monuments of the devotion and art of 
 the Middle Ages. But many steps of the transition 
 to churches of a different character had already 
 been taken in England itself. Perpendicular churches 
 are very spacious, with windows which were designed 
 for the display of magnificent stained glass, and 
 lent themselves readily to be adapted to preaching 
 houses. A good example of the seventeenth century 
 conception of a dignified church is to be seen at 
 Deny 1 . The city of London was responsible for 
 carrying out this scheme of plantation handsomely ; 
 the Cathedral which was added to the thirteenth 
 century tower was built in 1628 ; the peal of bells 
 was presented by Charles I at the request of Arch- 
 bishop Laud. This noble building has neither aisles 
 
 1 Samson, Dewy, 199.
 
 in] Meeting Houses 59 
 
 nor transepts, but forms a fine hall capable of 
 containing a large congregation. Preaching had 
 come to have a great importance as an element in 
 public worship ; and no seventeenth century church 
 would have been generally approved unless it served 
 conveniently as a "preaching auditory 1 ." This 
 object was kept in view by Cromwell's Major General 
 in building a church at Berwick upon Tweed as 
 well as by Wren in replacing the churches which 
 had been destroyed by the Fire. The builders of 
 New England meeting houses did not make a new 
 departure of their own, but merely followed suit. 
 The old New England churches are for the most 
 part Georgian, and are closely similar to those which 
 were being erected in England during the same 
 period. They testify to the continuous influence 
 which the Mother Country exercised on the arts 
 of life in the colonies. 
 
 The meeting house was a part of the heritage 
 derived from England, not only in its structural 
 character, but in the variety of the purposes for which 
 it was employed. The New England towns, in using 
 their churches for secular meetings, were perpetuating 
 a practice which had long been established in England. 
 
 1 J. Graunt, Observations on Bills of Mortality, p. 78 in 
 Hull's Economic Writings of Sir W. Petty, n. 383.
 
 60 Public Buildings {CH. 
 
 " In Elizabethan England, the Church of each parish 
 was not only its place of worship but also the seat and 
 centre for the transaction of all business concerning 
 the parish 1 ." Public announcements were made 
 there in regard to the perambulations of the parish, 
 the repair of the highways and the straying of 
 beasts 2 , and vestries were held for the passing of 
 accounts and the making of rates. In the attempts 
 to enforce ecclesiastical discipline "the Church was 
 turned for the time being into a small Police Court 
 where all the parish scandal was carefully gone over 
 and ventilated 3 ." 
 
 There was very little feeling that a church was 
 a sacred place, and that behaviour in it should be 
 reverent. During Elizabeth's visit to the University 
 of Cambridge, the academic exercises were held in 
 Great St Mary's Church, and the Queen was much 
 interested in a disputation among members of the 
 medical faculty, when Dr Lorkin defended the 
 thesis "Coenandum liberalius, quam prandendum." 
 A desire had been long cherished to provide a separate 
 
 1 S. L. Ware, Elizabethan Parish, in Johns Hopkins 
 Historical Studies, Series xxvi. 314. 
 
 2 In France and among the French in Illinois the assemblies 
 which regulated the management of pasturage were held at 
 the church door after Mass. See C. W. Alvord, Introduction 
 to Collections of Illinois Historical Library, n. p. xxii. 
 
 8 S. L. Ware, op. cit. 316.
 
 in] Meeting Houses 61 
 
 building for the meetings of the members of the Senate 
 and for academic functions ; but this was not carried 
 into effect till 1722 1 . The Baptists of Providence 
 in Rhode Island were only reverting in 1775 to the 
 old Cambridge tradition when they built a church 
 for the "Public Worship of Almighty God and also 
 for holding Commencement in." These early meeting 
 houses help us to remember that some of the 
 practices of colonial life, which are incongruous 
 to modern ideas, were really derived from England. 
 
 (iii) Renaissance Architecture. 
 
 There was no marked difference during the 
 Middle Ages between the architectural styles that 
 were employed for ecclesiastical and for secular 
 purposes; no particular style had specially sacred 
 associations. In the same way it may be said that 
 there was very little distinction between public 
 buildings and private houses. The same sort of 
 structure which served for the requirements of a 
 large household, was regarded as appropriate for 
 official business. The ancient manor house at 
 Great Boothby, and the so-called Pythagoras School 
 at Cambridge, are very similar to the Town Hall 
 which was built for the new Winchelsea which 
 
 1 Clark, Architectural History of the University of Cambridge, 
 ill. 46.
 
 62 Public Buildings [CH. 
 
 Edward I founded in 1288. A similar parallelism 
 can be found in Tudor times ; the mansions which 
 were built by country gentlemen had many features 
 in common with the official residences of the mayors, 
 and the halls where the civic fathers exercised 
 hospitality 1 . In the eighteenth century, the features 
 which were employed by architects to give dignity 
 and importance to great private houses, were also 
 available for public buildings intended for civic 
 purposes. 
 
 The end of the seventeenth and the eighteenth 
 centuries have been rendered famous in the history 
 of English Architecture by the mansions which were 
 erected, though these houses do not eclipse the 
 magnificence of the Tudor Period. Inigo Jones, 
 Wren and their imitators, have left striking monu- 
 ments in every part of the country. The pages of 
 
 1 In Scotland where the gentry continued to build fortified 
 houses for themselves, the municipal buildings long retained 
 something of the character of a peel-tower as in the Canongate 
 Tolbooth (1591). Then a bell-tcwer, or steeple, which is an 
 ordinary adjunct to a Scottish Town Hall, was required in 
 a state of society where it was often necessary to summon the 
 townsmen for the common defence (MacGibbon and Ross, 
 Castellated and Domestic Architecture, v. 98). There are 
 continental analogies not only for the Town Hall with an 
 open arcade, but also for the fortified type. The Palazzo 
 Vecchio at Florence is an early example. F. Bluntschli, 
 Geb&ude fur Verwaltung, etc. (1887), p. 6 in Durm, Handbuch 
 der Architectur, iv.
 
 in] Renaissance Architecture 63 
 
 Vitruvius Britannicus record the best examples of 
 domestic architecture during this period, and the 
 work was carried on through the eighteenth century 
 by the Adam family. This remarkable era was 
 reflected in the contemporary building in the 
 American colonies when life had so far developed 
 that it was possible to erect dignified houses for 
 private residence and for public purposes. The 
 beautiful colonial houses recall features that were 
 novel and attractive in Renaissance work in England, 
 especially in the prominence that has been given 
 to the portico. There are, however, other features 
 of special interest, which occur on both sides of the 
 Atlantic, to which it is worth while to call special 
 attention. 
 
 The dome, or cupola as it used to be called, was 
 alien to Gothic architecture and had no place in the 
 tradition of Western Christendom; but the glory 
 of S. Sophia compelled admiration, and that church 
 set a type which was imitated both in the East 
 and the West. It was accepted as a model by the 
 architects of the Italian Renaissance, and excited 
 great admiration when Wren introduced it in the 
 rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral. Cupolas had 
 been already employed in domestic architecture, 
 as they form the crowning ornaments of Longleat
 
 64 Public Buildings [CH. 
 
 (1568), and were also used in the Palace at Greenwich 
 which was begun for Charles II, and was subse- 
 quently completed under William and Mary 1 as 
 a hospital for seamen. A large single dome was the 
 principal feature in the front of Castle Howard 
 which was designed by Vanbrugh for the third 
 Earl of Carlisle in 1702. So much intercourse was 
 carried on between the southern plantations and the 
 Mother Country in regard to building operations 2 , 
 that there is every probability in the tradition that 
 the Ridgely House (1784) at Hampton in Maryland, 
 with its striking dome, was copied from Castle 
 Howard 3 ; though this may have been suggested 
 by the dome in the design of the State House at 
 Annapolis (1777). After that time the dome came 
 to be commonly accepted as a prominent feature 
 in public buildings; it was adopted by Jefferson 
 in the University of Virginia ; and since it has been 
 used with such excellent effect at Boston and in 
 the Capitol at Washington, it has come to be 
 
 1 Wren, Parentalia, 329. 
 
 2 English bricks were imported for several colonial 
 houses; the Court House at Williamsburg was designed by 
 Wren, and Claremont in Surrey was copied at Claremont in 
 Virginia. 
 
 3 Captain Charles Ridgely who built the house at Hampton 
 was connected with the Howards through his mother, Rachel 
 Howard, and greatly admired Castle Howard which he visited 
 about 1760.
 
 in] Renaissance Architecture 65 
 
 regarded as specially appropriate to a State 
 House. 
 
 Castle Howard is of interest not only because 
 of the cupola, but owing to its ground plan: there 
 were two wings flanking the front and connected 
 with the main building by colonnades. This scheme 
 for the arrangement of a country house was found 
 to be highly convenient, and was adopted in many 
 mansions which did not make pretensions to magni- 
 ficence. It was recommended by Ware 1 for any 
 gentleman who desired to build for "convenience 
 more than magnificence," and to hare the house 
 " handsome though not pompous." The plan seems 
 to have met the requirements of many of the Scottish 
 gentry ; it had been already employed by Sir William 
 Bruce at Kinross House (1685), and in quite a 
 number of the designs which he made for houses 
 in all parts of Scotland, William Adam, the father 
 of the four more celebrated brothers, arranged the 
 house and offices on these lines 2 . This plan for a 
 country residence was widely known, and it is 
 
 1 Ware, Complete Body of Architecture (1756), 406. 
 
 2 W. Adam, Vitruvius Scoticus, Plates 19, 32, 39, 63, 86, 
 88, 95, 112, 114, 116, 125, 139, 143, 159. This list is not by 
 any means exhaustive of the examples of this model of 
 country house in Scotland. Airds House in Appin, according 
 to a monument in Lismore graveyard, was built by Robert 
 Ker, mason, who died in 1738. Unfortunately the front has 
 recently been rebuilt. 
 
 C. <
 
 66 Public Buildings [CH. 
 
 represented in Virginia by the house which Washing- 
 ton built at Mount Vernon ; where, as is commonly 
 said, the wings formed convenient domestic offices 
 for the slaves. 
 
 (iv) The Stars and Stripes. 
 
 So much of the argument as to historical con- 
 nections in the preceding paragraph rests on the 
 resemblances, that it is worth while to add a warning 
 that such evidence, however suggestive it may be, 
 can never be conclusive ; and that there is constant 
 need to guard against placing too much reliance upon 
 a likeness as proving an actual connection. The name 
 of Washington supplies a case in point. It is com- 
 monly said that the United States flag was derived 
 from the shield of the Washington family, which 
 certainly contains stars and stripes. This is shown 
 in a monument in Little St Mary's Church at Cam- 
 bridge 1 ; the field is argent ; there are three mullets 
 gules, or five-pointed stars, in chief, and three bars 
 azure ; and there is a superficial resemblance to the 
 
 1 This was erected to the memory of Godfrey Washington, 
 a fellow of Peterhouse who died in 1729. Mr Hulme (Flags 
 of the World, 91) blazons the arms of Washington's great- 
 great-grandfather, on a brass in Sulgrave Church, Northampton, 
 as a white shield having two horizontal red bars and above 
 these a row of three red stars. Washington's book plate has 
 been reproduced by Mr P. L. Ford, The True George Washing- 
 ton, 204.
 
 in] The Stars and Stripes 67 
 
 American flag though there are also differences in the 
 tinctures and position of the bars which should not 
 be ignored. There is besides evidence of a direct 
 connection which seems to set at rest any doubts 
 that might be raised. We have an account of 
 the occasion when the first order was given for the 
 making of the Stars and Stripes ; and this seems to 
 show that Washington took a personal part in 
 designing the flag. "A committee of congress 
 accompanied by General Washington in June 1776 
 called upon Mrs Ross who was an upholsterer, and 
 engaged her to make the flag from a rough drawing, 
 which at her suggestion was redrawn by General 
 Washington in her back parlour 1 ." Apparently, 
 in his first sketch, Washington had drawn six- 
 pointed stars, but he accepted Mrs Ross' suggestion 
 that a five-pointed star would be better 2 . It is 
 of course possible that Mrs Ross was acquainted 
 with the General's shield 3 , or wished to make the 
 stars on the flag five-pointed out of compliment 
 
 1 Preble, History of the Flag of the United States of 
 America, 266. 
 
 a Preble, op. cit. 265. 
 
 3 Though Washington used his shield in his book plate, it 
 may be doubted whether his coat of arms was familiar to his 
 friends. The water mark of the writing paper, manufactured 
 for him, sheets of which are preserved in the John Carter 
 Brown Library at Providence, R.I., gives his name and his 
 crest; but the shield is a fancy design and not that of the 
 Washington family. 
 
 52
 
 68 Public Buildings [CH. 
 
 to him. But, even though it may be possible that 
 the selection of stars 1 in the canton of the United 
 States flag was connected with the Washington 
 mullets, there is no reason for maintaining that 
 the three bars were reproduced in the thirteen 
 stripes. The United States flag differs from the 
 Washington shield both in the arrangement of 
 colour 2 and in the number of the stripes ; and the 
 thirteen red and white stripes had been already 
 adopted for the United Colonies, in what was known 
 as the Revolutionary flag, which was first hoisted 
 at Boston on January 2, 1776; all that was done 
 six months later was to displace the Union Jack 
 which was the canton in the Revolutionary flag and 
 to substitute the stars instead. The conjunction 
 of mullets with bars in Washington's shield seems 
 to have nothing to do with the association of stars 
 with stripes on the American flag. 
 
 There is no difficulty in identifying the source 
 from which the stripes were really derived. A 
 
 1 The emblem which was most favoured by the colonists 
 seems to have been the rattle-snake, which was commended for 
 its vigilance, for its character in never beginning an attack 
 and never surrendering, and for generosity in giving notice 
 with her rattle and warning her enemies against treading on 
 her. Pennsylvania Journal, 27 Dec. 1775. Quoted by 
 Preble, op. cit. 214. 
 
 2 Hulme, op. cit. go.
 
 in] The Stars and Stripes 69 
 
 committee, consisting of Dr Franklin, Mr Lynch and 
 Mr Harrison, had been appointed at Boston to 
 confer with General Washington, in the camp at 
 Cambridge, as to the best means of continuing and 
 supporting a continental army 1 , and they appear 
 to have also decided upon a flag for the cruisers which 
 were being fitted out for the defence and protection 
 of the United Colonies 2 . Curiously enough they 
 determined to adopt, as their own, the flag which 
 was already well known as the flag of the East 
 India Company a red ensign with six white stripes 3 . 
 This device would not seem inappropriate, as the 
 militant colonists were still prepared to maintain 
 that they were loyal to the King though called 
 upon to protest against his agents and ministers. 
 None of these agents had been more offensive than 
 the East India Company, by whom the chests of 
 tea had been imported into Boston harbour 4 . Lord 
 North 5 had had an ingenious scheme for at once 
 enabling the East India Company to maintain their 
 monopoly against illicit importation and at the 
 same time to avoid the necessity of passing the 
 tea through the Customs at Boston. As Franklin 
 
 1 Franklin, Works. Ed. J. Spark, I. 400. 
 
 2 Preble, op. cit. 211. 
 
 8 Ibid. op. cit. 221. Hulme, op. cit. Plate vii. fig. 57. 
 ' R. Frothingham, Rise of Republic of United States, 298. 
 6 Parl. Hist. xvii. 841 (27 April 1773).
 
 70 Public Buildings [CH. 
 
 wrote from London 1 , " It was thought at the begin- 
 ning of the session that the duty on tea would be 
 taken off. But now the wise scheme is to take off 
 so much duty here (London) as to make tea cheaper 
 in America than foreigners can supply us, and to 
 confine the duty there to keep up the exercise of 
 the right." As Lord Chatham complained, the 
 ministry renewed their intention to tax the colonies 
 "under the pretence of serving the East India 
 Company" and so dressed up "taxation, that father 
 of American sedition, in the robes of an East India 
 Director 2 ." The "Mohawks" by raiding the East 
 India Company's ships in Boston harbour had not 
 only escaped "the trivial but tyrannous tax of three 
 pence on the pound" but had flouted the great 
 trading company, and they might be proud to 
 flaunt the company's flag as a memento of that 
 successful exploit 3 . 
 
 Events moved apace, however, and before 
 Jan. 2, 1776, when the revolutionary flag was first 
 displayed over the Continental Camp in Cambridge, 
 the colonists found themselves engaged in undoubted 
 rebellion against the King. The arrival of the news 
 
 1 June 4, 1773. Works, ed. Spark, viu. 48. 
 3 Parl. Hist. xvn. 1355 (27 May 1774). 
 8 According to tradition the Black Prince adopted the 
 badge of the King of Bohemia after Crecy.
 
 in] The Stars and Stripes 71 
 
 as to the King's Speech on October 26, 1775, settled 
 the matter ; and the new flag was hoisted as a sign 
 of defiance. Not unnaturally this display of the well 
 known East India Company's flag was misinter- 
 preted by the Royalists at Boston, and taken as 
 " a token of the deep impression the speech had made 
 and a sign of submission 1 ." No immediate action 
 was taken to prevent the repetition of such mistakes, 
 but six months later it was felt desirable to have a 
 flag which should be really distinctive; this was 
 effected by the simple expedient of displacing the 
 Union Jack in the canton and substituting the 
 Stars. The tradition as to the connection of the 
 design with Washington personally seems to have 
 a solid foundation in fact, but his coat of arms 
 does not suffice to explain the conjunction of the 
 different elements in the United States flag. 
 
 1 Washington writing to J. Reed, 4 January 1776. Preble, 
 op. cit. 218.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE COLLEGE COURSE* 
 
 (i) Emmanuel and Harvard. 
 
 The similarity of institutions and habits in the 
 Mother Country and in the Colonies renders it 
 highly probable that an English influence was at 
 work, but in any instances which can be specified 
 as showing conscious imitation we may have com- 
 plete confidence that we have come upon a real 
 link of connection. The Honourable Artillery 
 Company furnishes a case in point; it had already 
 existed in London for a century, when some members, 
 who had emigrated to Massachusetts, decided to 
 organise a branch in the New World. The Ancient 
 and Honourable Artillery Company of Boston was 
 founded in 1638; and the tie of kinship, which 
 combines the two Companies together, is recognised 
 on both sides of the Atlantic. Conscious imitation 
 was found, not only with regard to the military 
 
 1 Sesquicentennial Anniversary of Brown University, 
 Providence, R.I.
 
 CH. iv] Emmanuel and Harvard 73 
 
 training of citizens, but in higher education for 
 civil life as well; it is illustrated in the history 
 of the Universities of America. Till the War of 
 Independence, there were many men in the colonies 
 who were conscious of their own debt to English or 
 Scottish colleges and who were anxious to reproduce 
 them, with suitable modifications, in the land of 
 their adoption. John Harvard, in making provision 
 for the College which bears his name, might have 
 used the words of Sir Walter Mildmay, the founder 
 of Emmanuel, who claimed that "he had set an 
 acorn which, when it becomes an oak, God alone 
 knows what will be the fruit thereof 1 ." John 
 Harvard was anxious that the young men of the 
 Bay State should have the opportunity of coming 
 under influences similar to those which he had 
 prized in his Cambridge days. Emmanuel College 
 was a centre of Puritan teaching ; and in Harvard's 
 time it had been one of the foremost academic 
 institutions of the day; no less than eleven of the 
 seventeen Heads of Colleges during the Common- 
 wealth Period came from its walls; to Fuller it 
 seemed to overshadow all the University 2 . Em- 
 manuel had been founded with the special object 
 of providing men for the ministry; and pains had 
 
 1 Mullinger, History of the University of Cambridge, U. 312. 
 8 Mullinger, op. cit. n. 314.
 
 74 The College Course [CH. 
 
 been taken in framing the Statutes to secure that 
 graduates who had qualified as Doctors of Divinity 
 should not be content to lead an academic life, but 
 should go out into the world as learned ministers. 
 John Harvard was in complete sympathy with the 
 spirit of his own College, and he endeavoured to 
 transplant the methods of instruction by which his 
 mind had been disciplined. The tutorial system of 
 the colleges dominated English Academic life in 
 the seventeenth century; the public exercises in 
 the University had fallen into discredit, especially 
 in the Divinity Faculty, where the discussion of 
 burning questions was formal and pedantic. King 
 Henry VIII had attempted to revive professorial 
 teaching; but the public lectures of the Regius 
 Professors had not proved to be an effective substi- 
 tute for intimate personal intercourse with a tutor, 
 who was devoting himself to the intellectual and 
 religious training of the boys entrusted to his charge. 
 Strict discipline over all the habits of life, with 
 facilities for reading and daily association with men 
 of earnest piety and scholarly mind, had been the 
 characteristic training at Emmanuel ; and this was 
 the system which Harvard desired to transplant 
 when he founded a college in a new Cambridge 1 . 
 
 1 The account which Pierce has preserved of the schedules 
 of subjects for the various years at Harvard College in 1734
 
 IV] Emmanuel and, Harvard 75 
 
 In the eighteenth century however, this Puritan 
 College in Massachusetts was no longer adequate 
 for the requirements of the community in which 
 it was established. No provision had been made 
 for the faculties of Law and Medicine; and the 
 literary course did not seem to be well adapted for 
 those who desired to pursue such studies. Various 
 changes, which relaxed the old discipline, and 
 interfered with the old routine, were introduced at 
 Harvard, in spite of the protests of those who were 
 attached to the old system of training through strict 
 discipline and personal influence. In 1701 Mather 
 and his friends were enabled, by Eli Yale's muni- 
 ficence, to establish a new college, in which the old 
 academic tradition could be more carefully pre- 
 served, at New Haven in Connecticut. This new 
 foundation was not the outcome of any desire to 
 make a fresh departure in academic life; it was 
 due to a conservative reaction, and shows the 
 unwillingness of the men of New England to break 
 away from the methods of teaching and organisation 
 which had prevailed at Emmanuel in the seventeenth 
 century. The old tradition was an important element 
 in academic life in the New World, and has left its 
 
 shows that the Emmanuel tradition was being kept up. 
 Pierce, History of Harvard, Appendix I. pp. 4 and 6 and 
 Appendix xx. pp. 2 and 6.
 
 76 The College Course [CH. 
 
 mark in the functions discharged by disciplinary 
 officers, and in the time devoted to recitations. 
 Though the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge with 
 their tutorial system have long ceased to be regarded 
 in America as models to be consciously imitated, 
 there seems to be a movement in favour of strengthen- 
 ing this element in college life both at Harvard 
 and Princeton. 
 
 (ii) The Scottish Universities. 
 
 There were fresh attempts about the middle of 
 the eighteenth century in different States to make 
 better provision for academic education, but those 
 who were trying to devise a suitable course of study 
 no longer looked for guidance to England. They 
 had out-lived the English college as transplanted to 
 American soil; and the English Universities had 
 entered on a period of stagnation ; they were making 
 no new developments, and were in many ways 
 unsuited to the conditions of colonial life. On the 
 other hand the Scottish Universities were beginning 
 to take a lead in many departments. David Gregory 
 was a pioneer in reforming the study of Mathematics 1 . 
 
 1 "He had already caused several of his scholars to keep 
 Acts as we call them, upon several branches of the Newtonian 
 philosophy; while we at Cambridge, poor wretches, were 
 ignominiously studying the fictitious hypotheses of the 
 Cartesians." Whiston quoted by Grant, Story of the University 
 of Edinburgh, n. 297.
 
 rv] The Scottish Universities 77 
 
 The lectures which Hugh Blair delivered as Professor 
 of Rhetoric in Edinburgh long held their place as a 
 textbook. Thomas Reid's System of Philosophy 
 continued to be the bulwark of orthodoxy; and 
 Adam Smith, as Professor of Moral Philosophy 
 at Glasgow, gave us the first scientific exposition of 
 Political Economy. That such men studied and 
 worked in Scottish Universities is a sufficient testi- 
 mony to the vigorous intellectual life of these 
 institutions. 
 
 There was, moreover, another feature which 
 would more especially commend them to colonists 
 who were endeavouring to organise facilities for 
 academic study. The Scottish Universities were 
 organised with careful consideration for the require- 
 ments of the community as a whole, and the ecclesi- 
 astical element, though important, was subordinate. 
 This was especially true of Edinburgh University, 
 which had been from the first closely interconnected 
 with the civil life of the town. The Lord Provost 
 and Town Council appear to have taken the initiative 
 in the establishment and endowment of this seat 
 of learning 1 , and they obtained complete responsi- 
 bility for its management in the Charter given by 
 King James VI in 1582. They had not only the 
 1 Grant, Story of the University of Edinburgh, I. 99.
 
 78 The College Course [CH. 
 
 management of the funds, but of the staff; they 
 had to make appointments of Regents and Pro- 
 fessors, and they intervened again and again to 
 decide purely academical matters, such as the course 
 of studies which should be pursued. The constitution 
 of the pre-Reformation Scottish Colleges was also 
 modified so as to give greater prominence to civil 
 authorities. 
 
 Academic life in Edinburgh had little of the 
 distinctive feature of a college. The students had 
 no common dining hall 1 ; and, from the first, there 
 was a large proportion of out-college students, who 
 resided under parental authority at home, or, in 
 the case of students from the country, with house- 
 holders whom their parents trusted. College disci- 
 pline was supplementary to that of home and not a 
 substitute for it. The close supervision and frequent 
 intercourse, which were the main features of the 
 tutorial system, never took root in Edinburgh, 
 The work of the Regents was that of instructors, 
 who conducted their pupils through all the different 
 subjects of their course and who acted as lecturers 
 rather than personal guides, philosophers and friends. 
 
 There was another feature which characterised 
 the Scottish Universities ; the formal and systematic 
 study of English was regarded as important. After 
 1 Grant, op. cit, I. 140.
 
 iv] The Scottish Universities 79 
 
 the Union, the Scots looked to England, and the 
 colonies which England had planted, as a field for 
 the exercise of their talents; they recognised that 
 they would be handicapped, if they spoke and wrote 
 in a northern dialect, and it was important that 
 they should have command of the best models of 
 English. A great deal of attention was given to the 
 cultivation of English style by Scotsmen in the 
 early part of the eighteenth century 1 ; and, under 
 the influence of Lord Kamer , systematic instruction 
 in taste and composition by Adam Smith was 
 provided at Edinburgh in 1748 2 . A regular pro- 
 fessorship was founded in 1762. The study of the 
 English language, together with the cultivation of 
 oratory based on English models, in Scotland was 
 in marked contrast with the neglect in English 
 Universities, but the attention given to this subject 
 is in accordance with the practice which has been 
 maintained in the colleges in the American colonies. 
 A great step in academic progress had been 
 taken by the Town Council of Edinburgh in 1708, 
 
 1 Ramsay, Scotland and Scotsmen, I. 4. 
 
 2 Grant, op. cit. i. 276. It is noticeable however that as 
 late as 1704 the Town Council, in laying down principles of 
 College discipline, had insisted that all students were obliged 
 to speak in Latin, and those who spoke English in the College 
 were liable to be fined. Bower, History of the University of 
 Edinburgh, n. 37.
 
 8o The College Course [CH. 
 
 when they approved of the scheme of reform which 
 was advocated by William Carstares. Appoint- 
 ments were henceforth to be made to professorships 
 of one particular subject, so that the students had 
 the opportunity of attending the instruction of men, 
 who had each specialised in his own subject, instead 
 of receiving their instruction in all subjects from 
 the same Regent. The change was carried out by 
 relieving each of the Regents of all responsibility 
 for certain subjects, and allowing him to concentrate 
 on a branch of study in which he was personally 
 interested. This important improvement had already 
 been adopted in Holland, and it gave facilities for 
 the constant enlargement of the scope of academic 
 studies. This change of system almost necessarily 
 involved the laying down of a definite curriculum 
 of study, as it seemed desirable to decide the order in 
 which students should attend the lectures of the 
 different professors. The principles on which this 
 scheme was founded are explained in a Minute of 
 the Town Council of i6th Jan. 1 The first year was 
 
 1 Bower, n. 70-72. "The council taking to their con- 
 sideration what may be the most proper methods for 
 advancing of learning in their own college of Edinburgh, have 
 agreed upon the following articles as a rule of teaching in 
 the said college: Primo, That all the parts of philosophy 
 be taught in two years, as they are in the most famous 
 universities abroad. Secundo, That, as a consequence of this 
 article, there be but two philosophy classes in the college, to
 
 rv The Scottish Universities 81 
 
 mainly occupied with Latin, the second with Greek, 
 the third with Logic and the last with Natural 
 Philosophy; but there were also professorships of 
 Mathematics and Moral Philosophy in connection 
 with the Arts Course; while provision had also 
 been made for the Faculties of Divinity, Medicine 
 and Law. 
 
 Sir Robert Sibbald, who had succeeded in 
 securing the royal approval for the organisation 
 
 be taught by two of the four present professors of philosophy. 
 Tertio, That, in the first of these classes, the students be taught 
 logic and metaphysics ; and in the last, a compend of ethics 
 and natural philosophy. Quarto, Because there are many 
 useful things belonging to the pneumatics and moral philo- 
 sophy, which the two professors, in the present method of 
 teaching classes, cannot overtake, therefore it is proposed 
 that one of the two remaining professors shall be appointed 
 to teach those two parts of philosophy more fully, at such 
 times as the students are not obliged to be in their classes; 
 and because he has not the charge of a class, he may have 
 public lessons of philosophy in the common hall, where all 
 the students may be present, at such times as shall be most 
 convenient. Quinto, That there shall be a fixed professor of 
 Greek; but so that neither he nor his successors shall, upon 
 any pretence whatsoever, endeavour to hinder the admission 
 of students into the philosophy classes in the usual manner, 
 although they have not been taught Greek by him. Sexto, 
 And, in regard the present professors have given proof of 
 their qualifications in all the parts both of philosophy and 
 Greek, therefore, when any of these four professors places 
 become vacant, the remaining professors of these now in 
 places, alternately shall have the offer of the vacancy according 
 to their standing ; and, when one chooses it, the rest shall, in 
 the like manner, be allowed to succeed him...." 
 
 c. 6
 
 82 The College Course [CH. 
 
 of a college of physicians in Edinburgh (1681) was 
 appointed in 1685 by the Town Council to be the 
 first professor of Physic; and he secured a status 
 for those practitioners who had studied medicine, 
 and were not mere quacks. The lack of opportunity 
 for prosecuting the study of law at home had been 
 severely felt by Scotsmen, and they had been forced 
 to go for instruction in the Civil Law to Leyden 
 or Utrecht. To remedy this defect, Alexander 
 Cunningham was appointed professor of the Civil 
 Law in Scotland by Parliament in 1698; but he 
 mainly devoted himself to research and publication, 
 and the Town Council established a teaching pro- 
 fessorship of Civil Law at Edinburgh in 1710. 
 Edinburgh University, as reformed by the Town 
 Council on the advice of William Carstares, set 
 an example which the other Scottish Universities 
 adopted in turn Glasgow in 1727, St Andrews in 
 1747 and Aberdeen in 1754. This reformed and 
 vigorous academic life, north of the Tweed, could 
 not fail to attract the attention of those who were 
 desirous of promoting higher education in the 
 American colonies.
 
 iv] Princeton and Edinburgh 83 
 
 (iii) Princeton and Edinburgh. 
 
 The main lines of academic instruction remained 
 unaltered in Scottish Universities from 1708 till 
 1893, though some additional subjects had been 
 introduced. The curriculum had become very rigid 
 at that time, and it was in many ways similar in 
 type to the college course which had been found 
 suitable for American requirements. But too much 
 stress must not be laid on mere likeness ; the question 
 arises whether this resemblance is merely accidental, 
 or whether there are real links of connection between 
 the academic life of Scotland and that of America. 
 It is of course possible that the family likeness is 
 due to a common ancestry, and that the American 
 like the Scottish College Course was derived directly 
 from Holland. We may remember, however, that 
 the academic intercourse between Scotland and 
 Holland was chiefly due to the necessity of studying 
 the Civil Law which was administered in both 
 countries, and that there was no similar reason for 
 English colonists to resort to Leyden. There is no 
 evidence of much academic intercourse between the 
 colonies and Holland in the middle of the eighteenth 
 century; and Princeton, the third great American 
 College, was founded in a region where there was 
 no direct connection with Holland; while the ties 
 
 62
 
 84 The College Course [CH. 
 
 with Scotland were close and intimate. A large 
 number of Scottish Presbyterians had settled in 
 New Jersey, and they took an active part in inducing 
 the State to found the College at Princeton in 1746. 
 This was primarily a Presbyterian institution, though 
 its doors were open to the young men of other 
 denominations, who desired to be trained for the 
 ministry, and Princeton has exercised a very wide 
 influence on academic life in the United States. 
 The first off-shoot from the New Jersey College was 
 due to the desire of the Baptists to obtain a better 
 status than they had been able to secure at Prince- 
 ton. When the State of Rhode Island established 
 the college, which is now known as Brown University, 
 the conditions under which the Scottish Universities 
 had prospered appear to have been borne in mind, 
 and the importance of civil, as compared with 
 ecclesiastical authority, is symbolised by the promi- 
 nent place which the Sheriff still takes in academic 
 ceremonial of every kind. 
 
 Numbers of Scottish graduates migrated to 
 America at the close of the seventeenth and beginning 
 of the eighteenth century, and it seems highly 
 probable that the experience and methods of the 
 Scottish Universities should have been consciously 
 taken into account. In the decade from 1670 to 1680
 
 iv] Princeton and Edinburgh 85 
 
 there was a large influx of Scottish Presbyterians 
 from Ulster 1 ; and another body of religious refugees 
 escaped from Scotland after the defeat of the Cove- 
 nanters at Bothwell Bridge (1679). This particular 
 expedition was organised by William Dunlop 2 , who 
 continued to minister to the settlers after they 
 reached Carolina, and who subsequently returned 
 to Scotland and was appointed Principal of Glasgow 
 University 3 . Not all the ministers who migrated 
 with the Presbyterian refugees or followed them 
 afterwards were men of such academic distinction, 
 but, if they were as loyal to their native institutions 
 as Scotsmen usually are, they may be credited with 
 a wish to reproduce in the New World the system 
 of training with which they were familiar at home. 
 Two at least of those who took an active part in the 
 establishment of the New College at Princeton were 
 familiar with the Scottish system. Dr Tennant 4 , 
 who was one of the prime movers in the establish- 
 ment of Princeton, as well as Dr Witherspoon, who 
 took an active part in its development, were graduates 
 of Edinburgh, and thus we can point to a channel 
 through which the Scottish methods of teaching 
 may have found their way to American Colleges. 
 
 1 Briggs, American Presbyterianism, 115. 2 Ibid. 127. 
 
 ' William Carstares who initiated the College Course at 
 Edinburgh was his brother-in-law and cousin. 
 * Princeton Sesquicentennial volume, 325.
 
 86 The College Course [CH. 
 
 The influence which Scotsmen have exercised on 
 American institutions cannot be easily gauged. The 
 Scots in the eighteenth century failed to found any 
 colony which was a reproduction of the Scottish 
 polity 1 . The Darien colony was a disastrous failure ; 
 and Scotland was more concerned in the eighteenth 
 century with consolidating her own national life, 
 than with attempting national expansion. 
 
 There are many areas, like the Huron tract in 
 Canada, and Dunedin in New Zealand, where 
 Scottish settlers are numerous; but they have not 
 established separate polities, with distinctive insti- 
 tutions, in the nineteenth century; and they had 
 no opportunity of doing so before. The framework 
 of society had been transplanted from England to 
 America and the Scots fitted themselves into it 
 as best they could. The pride of ancestry in New 
 England has taken the form of tracing descent from 
 the Pilgrim Fathers and from families in Devonshire 
 and the Eastern Counties. The various colonies 
 derived their religious character from different bodies 
 of English Nonconformists, the Independents estab- 
 lished themselves at Massachusetts and Connecticut, 
 the Baptist imposed his principles on Rhode Island, 
 
 1 The most successful attempts were in New Jersey and 
 Carolina. Keith, Commercial Relations of England and 
 Scotland, 131.
 
 iv] Princeton and Edinburgh 87 
 
 the Quaker presided over the development of Penn- 
 sylvania, while Roman Catholics found Maryland 
 a congenial soil. It seems as if the Scot had had no 
 footing in the New World, and that there was no 
 basis from which he could play a part in moulding 
 American civilisation. But though there was no 
 local centre which was officially organised on 
 Scottish lines the influence which has been exercised 
 by Scotsmen, individually and personally, has been 
 very real ; especially as regards the religious history 
 of the United States. It was from Scotland that 
 Presbyterianism was transplanted, and it was through 
 the energy of a Scotsman that Episcopalians were 
 enabled to organise Episcopal government and to 
 introduce a Prayer Book. It is at least interesting 
 to speculate as to the extent of Scottish influence 
 on the Colleges, where the ministers of all denomina- 
 tions were trained, and in which the intellectual 
 life of the United States has been so deeply moulded. 
 If the founding of polities of their own were the 
 only method by which an influence could be brought 
 to bear on new countries and little developed lands, 
 the smaller nations might fear that they were 
 excluded from having any share in moulding the 
 civilisation that is spreading through the world; 
 but much of the progress of mankind may go on 
 through personal action and not by the planting
 
 88 The College Course [CH. 
 
 of institutions. Science and Art are cosmopolitan; 
 they may be encouraged and developed in one 
 country rather than another, but the published 
 results of progress in experimental knowledge become 
 available for all. Officialism cannot monopolise 
 them, and has not proved itself the most effective 
 agent for their transmission. The people of a country 
 which fails to found distant colonies are not thereby 
 debarred from making important contributions to 
 the moral, intellectual and material progress of 
 every part of the world. 
 
 (iv) Public Libraries. 
 
 Scottish influence seems to have done much in 
 moulding academic institutions in America; but 
 the endeavour to organise public libraries, which are 
 such a prominent feature in American civilisation, 
 must be traced to a different source; they are 
 a mark of the far reaching influence of the ecclesi- 
 astical revival which occurred at the close of the 
 seventeenth century in England. Facilities for the 
 educated reader are not so wholly modern as we 
 are apt to suppose; the fifteenth century was a 
 remarkable period in the history of libraries. Before 
 the invention of printing, when books were few and 
 precious, monasteries, cathedrals and secular insti- 
 tutions vied with one another in erecting libraries,
 
 iv] Public Libraries 89 
 
 in stocking them with books, and in framing liberal 
 regulations for making them useful to the public 1 . 
 These ancient collections were ruthlessly broken up 
 and destroyed at the Reformation, but some attempt 
 was made to diffuse the new teaching in England 
 by encouraging people to read for themselves: the 
 public had the opportunity of frequenting church 
 in order to read the printed Bible; and other 
 books, such as Foxe's Martyrs, Jewel's Apology, 
 were occasionally available for the use of parishioners. 
 Here and there benefactions were left to found 
 parochial libraries, partly for the benefit of the 
 incumbent, who might be too poor to buy books, 
 and partly for the "edification of the common 
 people 2 ." These libraries were sufficiently important 
 in the early eighteenth century to be made the sub- 
 ject of legislation and an act of parliament was 
 passed for their better regulation and preservation 3 . 
 
 This system spread to the colonies. Dr Thomas 
 Bray, who had been appointed commissary in 
 Maryland by Bishop Compton of London, regarded 
 parochial libraries as essential to his undertaking; 
 he devoted much time to the collecting of books, 
 
 1 J. W. Clark, Care of Books, 245. 
 
 2 H. Cheetham's Will, quoted by R. G. Christie. Old 
 Church Libraries of Lancashire, 20. 
 
 8 7 Anne, c. 14.
 
 go The College Course [CH. iv 
 
 and took with him works worth 2400 when he 
 sailed to the New World. He aimed at instituting 
 lending libraries for the public at large, and he 
 issued one or two publications in which he explained 
 his project, and put forward a system of classifying 
 the books. A network of libraries was established 
 in Maryland, with Annapolis as the centre ; and the 
 system was extended to South Carolina 1 , New 
 York and other States; one of the libraries was 
 planted in connection with King's Chapel at Boston. 
 The movement continued to grow during the first 
 twenty years of the eighteenth century; but as an 
 adjunct to the Protestant Episcopal Church, it never 
 attained a wide popularity; the arrangements for 
 maintaining the libraries and purchasing additional 
 books were inadequate ; the scheme languished and 
 became moribund before the Revolution. The 
 pioneers of public libraries in the States were eager 
 to diffuse religious knowledge, and progress became 
 more rapid when the library movement was strong 
 enough to stand upon its own feet. Its original 
 connection with the English parochial system is 
 all the more interesting, because that system had 
 such a slight hold on the New World. 
 
 1 The State Legislature passed in 1700 a law for the 
 custody of the books at Charlestown. Steiner, Dr T. Bray 
 and his American Libraries in Am. Hist. Rev. n. 70.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 MODERN SOCIAL PROBLEMS 1 
 
 (i) Patriarchal and Progressive Societies. 
 
 The character of social duties, and the methods 
 of discharging social responsibilities, differ greatly 
 in a progressive as compared with a stationary 
 state of society. This is the fundamental difference 
 between the East and the West to-day, and it is 
 also a contrast between Christendom, as it was in 
 the Middle Ages, and Western Europe as we know 
 it in modern times. Under a natural economy, 
 such as obtained very generally in the Early Middle 
 Ages, personal qualities were the main factor in the 
 management of affairs of every kind. The firmness 
 and kindliness, which are the abiding influence within 
 the domestic circle, were brought into play on a 
 large scale to maintain good order in monastic and 
 manorial establishments ; public and private affairs 
 could not be distinguished or treated apart. Wise 
 regulation and conscious dependence were the 
 
 1 Massachusetts Technocological Institute, Boston, Mass.
 
 92 Modern Social Problems [CH. 
 
 conditions of prosperity. A traditional system of 
 common cultivation of the soil, and of providing 
 maintenance for the labourers, was carried on for 
 centuries, and it served its purpose in what was 
 practically a stationary state of society. Mediaeval 
 authorities endeavoured to secure that every man 
 should have the necessities of life] but there was 
 no attempt to distinguish the services of individuals 
 and to give them comforts or luxuries according 
 to their personal worth to the community. Roger 
 Bacon, the greatest inventor and most advanced 
 scientific man of the thirteenth century, had the 
 necessaries of life assigned him, and no more. The 
 serf who ploughed the lord's domain had the means 
 of securing the necessities of life and no more. The 
 chief political problem of the day was that of main- 
 taining such law and order that it should be possible 
 for all to enjoy the means of subsistence assigned 
 them; and the chief economic problem was that 
 of organising administrative machinery to ensure 
 that each individual should put in his fair share of 
 work, and thus should prove himself to be worth 
 his keep 1 . The organisation of the monastery or 
 of the manor was devoted to attempts to procure 
 from all those who were labouring in the community 
 enough work and sufficiently good work to enable 
 1 Cunningham, Christianity and Economic Science, 27.
 
 V] The Black Death 93 
 
 them to justify their position as members of the 
 community. Similarly the whole of the gild organi- 
 sation in mediaeval towns was devoted to insuring 
 to each qualified craftsman his share in the industry 
 of the town, and to seeing that he was so qualified 
 that his work should be a credit to the town. It 
 necessarily followed, from this system of organisa- 
 tion, that each centre of regulation should be self- 
 centred, if not isolated, and that the threads which 
 connected the different communities into one realm 
 should be of the slightest. 
 
 The mediaeval system broke down after the 
 national catastrophe known as the Black Death; 
 so far as the management of land was concerned, 
 it could no longer be maintained. The tyranny of 
 custom in the cultivation of common fields and 
 pasturage on common waste was proving extrava- 
 gant, and the fertility of the soil was being exhausted. 
 There were, besides, various causes at work which 
 tended to disintegrate society, and which caused 
 the labourers to revolt against conscious dependence 
 on the manorial lords. The rural labourers demanded, 
 in a time of great national distress, that the rates 
 of wages should be substantially raised in accordance 
 with the law of demand and supply, and refused 
 to conform to the old system of regulation. They
 
 94 Modern Social Problems [CH. 
 
 eagerly asserted the claims of the individual to the 
 personal reward which he himself earned, and 
 unconsciously they introduced the conditions which 
 were favourable to the growth of a progressive 
 society. 
 
 It is not easy to gauge the precise gain and loss 
 of this change, which marks the beginning of com- 
 petition rates of wages for labour and of all the 
 social problems which are still unsolved. It is 
 difficult to say how far the pecuniary gain to the 
 labourers was discounted at once by a rise of prices, 
 and was lost in the following century, owing to the 
 diminution and irregularity of employment. It 
 seems doubtful whether there was any gain to the 
 masses of the population, in the way of material 
 comfort ; but there was an increased sense of inde- 
 pendence, and a consciousness of being more fairly 
 treated. Moreover, the economic gain to society 
 was enormous, as the change opened up all sorts 
 of possibilities of improvement, through the scope 
 that was now allowed to individual enterprise. But 
 it is not obvious whether the new conditions were 
 really beneficial to the masses of the peasantry, 
 who were set free from customary obligations, but 
 their customary privileges were endangered. They 
 were set free from dependence on authority, of 
 which they were conscious and which was irritating
 
 v] Material Progress 95 
 
 and galling; but they came to be directly exposed 
 to the play of economic forces of which they were 
 for the most part unconscious, and to suffering 
 which appeared inexplicable. To the energetic man 
 it was an immense advantage to enjoy more freedom 
 and to have his claims to be paid, according to the 
 worth of his own work, recognised. Since that time, 
 a new method of applying the principle of justice 
 has dominated social arrangements, and society 
 encourages a man to expect to receive the worth 
 of that which he himself contributes to the wealth 
 of society, instead of endeavouring to force him to 
 produce a sufficient equivalent for his maintenance. 
 
 Among men of the English race it would be 
 generally agreed that the transition from a stationary 
 to a progressive society has been beneficial, not only 
 to the community as a whole, but to a very large 
 proportion of the men and women who compose 
 society. It may be doubted if there is any class 
 whose standard of material comfort has gone down 
 since the Middle Ages, and multitudes now enjoy 
 comforts and luxuries which were unattainable, 
 even by the rich, in former times. But we need not 
 forget that there has always been incidental suffering 
 in connection with material progress; and it is 
 quite likely that some tribes and peoples are as
 
 96 Modern Social Problems [CH. 
 
 happy in a condition of dependence, and in a 
 stationary state, as they would be if opportunities 
 of progress were open to them ; indeed some of them 
 may be at their best economically in such conditions. 
 It is not quite clear that all the races of mankind 
 are fitted for free institutions or ready to adapt them- 
 selves to a progressive society. The question whether 
 economic independence for individuals should be 
 established throughout the whole area of the United 
 States was the underlying issue in the Civil War; 
 history repeated itself but with a difference. In 
 England the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 was a 
 deliberate rising to secure economic independence; 
 in America the North regarded economic indepen- 
 dence as a boon which the South ought to be 
 compelled to accept. Serfdom had not been entirely 
 extinguished in England at the time when Virginia 
 was planted, and the Englishman who settled there 
 found it convenient to transplant manorial institu- 
 tions. In a southern soil, with facilities for procuring 
 imported labour, there was a reversion to an old 
 type of social organisation, and it was reproduced 
 in a very stringent form. The patriarchal system 
 of responsibility for the maintenance of individuals 
 and of compulsion to make them earn the worth 
 of their keep, was regarded by southern gentlemen 
 as the only possible method on which the material
 
 v] Local Interests 97 
 
 prosperity of the Southern States could be main- 
 tained, and as the system in which the negro showed 
 himself at his best. In England and America alike, 
 there was an appeal to force in order to break down 
 the old system; but, as we look back, we may 
 realise how little force can do in the way of recon- 
 struction, and how much time is required to enable 
 a new order to establish itself. 
 
 The two centuries which succeeded the Black 
 Death were a period of transition when the old 
 order was breaking up in England, and modern 
 society was beginning to take shape; it was only 
 gradually that modern problems emerged into clear 
 light ; but from the time of Elizabeth onwards there 
 have been successive efforts to deal with them. 
 An attempt even to state them shows how complex 
 modern life has become. There is on the one hand 
 the conflict between the interests of localities and 
 the welfare of the realm as a whole; in mediaeval 
 times, it seemed natural and right that the interests 
 of the locality should be the primary consideration, 
 for there was difficulty in grasping the conception 
 of the realm as a whole and in treating it as 
 a worthy object to which local interests ought to 
 be subordinated. There was need not only for the 
 growth of common sentiment throughout the whole 
 
 c. 7
 
 98 Modern Social Problems [CH. 
 
 community, but also for recognising the solidarity 
 of interests throughout the realm, and the fact 
 that localities would benefit indirectly and in the 
 long run, by co-operating for the common weal. 
 
 Similarly in the large territorial areas of a modern 
 country there is a conflict between the interest of 
 the individuals and the interest of the State: the 
 national life is longer than the life of the individual, 
 and the present generation will not enjoy the benefit 
 of any sacrifices that are made now, for the sake of 
 the future : when we review a long period of time, 
 individual welfare and national prosperity are seen 
 not to be opposed to one another ; but from moment 
 to moment they fall apart. Individual loss of some 
 kind is almost an inevitable incident in national 
 economic progress. The introduction of new 
 machinery is at first an injury to certain classes 
 of labourers, even though it be a gain to the com- 
 munity as a whole. With the constant change in 
 the organisation of production, the worth of each 
 individual's contribution to the work of the world 
 varies from time to time; we need not expect to 
 find a benefit to society reflected immediately and 
 directly in improvements in the lot of individuals; 
 but time affords opportunities for readjustment, 
 and in the long run national and individual interests 
 are reconciled. The improvements which open up
 
 v] The Realm as a whole 99 
 
 new opportunities and powers to the nation as a 
 whole, also benefit the individuals who will form 
 the community in time to come, even though each 
 step in progress is fraught with mischief for those 
 who are unable to adapt themselves to the change. 
 There is a constant difficulty in taking proper 
 account of the various elements which make up 
 the prosperity of society. It is comparatively easy 
 to reckon the material progress of the community, 
 and to estimate in terms of money the resources 
 of the realm, and the opportunities which wealth 
 opens up both to the community as a whole and to 
 individuals. But, the character and the health of 
 the citizens are national possessions which evade 
 the economic calculus 1 . The most important elements 
 in national welfare cannot be included in pecuniary 
 estimates, and we need to take account of broader 
 considerations, which may be termed political, in 
 trying to gauge the prosperity of a community. 
 
 (ii) The Elizabethan Realm. 
 
 The Elizabethan age was a time of many great 
 achievements; but nothing is more remarkable, as 
 a piece of constructive legislation, than the elaborate 
 scheme which was started for controlling the whole 
 industrial life of the country both in the towns and 
 1 Marshall, Principles of Economics, I. 81. 
 
 72
 
 ioo Modern Social Problems [CH. 
 
 in rural districts. The separatism of different manors 
 and municipalities was superseded by the organisa- 
 tion of the realm as a whole, and a serious effort 
 was made to draw the various parts of the country 
 out of their isolation so that they might co-operate 
 for the realm. A series of measures was enacted 
 to secure the training of workmen, to ensure fair 
 rates of wages, and to provide for the unemployed ; 
 but no attempt was made to set up a rigid system 
 with hard and fast rules ; the legislature established 
 a very flexible administrative system; and the 
 magistrates, whether they were landed gentry or 
 substantial townsmen, were the agents who adminis- 
 tered it in detail, under constant supervision by 
 the Council. 
 
 The precise measures which were appropriate 
 to England in the sixteenth century have long since 
 passed away and the administrative machinery has 
 been superseded ; but one lasting result was secured. 
 William Cecil gave a lead in attempting to deal 
 with modern problems systematically, and he induced 
 the wealthy classes of the community to take a 
 deeper interest in the prosperity of the realm as 
 a whole. 
 
 The sentiment of loyalty to the Crown was more 
 powerful during the Elizabethan age than ever 
 before, since the Norman Conquest. The union of
 
 v] The Elizabethan Realm 101 
 
 the two houses had left the Tudor Kings without a 
 rival, and focused the national sentiment on a 
 particular line of succession. Elizabeth was person- 
 ally careful to foster the element of romance which 
 attached to a Virgin Queen, and the various plots 
 against her life were skilfully used to make the 
 public feel that the national independence of England 
 was bound up in the security of the Crown. This 
 loyalty was displayed in the personal devotion of 
 courtiers, and in the homilies of churchmen on the 
 duties of citizens. The landed men were specially 
 responsive to this feeling, and were proud of being 
 entrusted with the Queen's commission and of the 
 social responsibilities laid upon them as Justices of 
 the Peace. 
 
 It was at this era too that the solidarity of the 
 interests of the realm became more apparent. In 
 the fifteenth century and part of the sixteenth, the 
 pecuniary interest of the landlords had not coincided 
 either with that of the villagers or of the realm as 
 a whole. As the result of changes in the position 
 of labour, the landlords had found it to their interest 
 to discontinue bailiff farming, and to utilise the 
 area which they were able to control for the feeding 
 of sheep, and the sale of wool. Expenses were cut 
 down and the increase of money rentals appears 
 to have been considerable, but the depopulating of
 
 IO2 Modern Social Problems [CH. 
 
 one village after another was a loss to the population 
 and to the food supply of the realm. The develop- 
 ment of corn markets during the Elizabethan period 
 made an extraordinary change. With better oppor- 
 tunities for the sale of corn it ceased to be to the 
 interest of landlords to use the land for pasture 
 farming; with the introduction of convertible 
 husbandry the landlords found it most profitable 
 for themselves and for their heirs to use the land for 
 the increase of the food supply, and the employment 
 of the rural population; and thus their personal 
 interests came to coincide with those of the realm. 
 There was a protracted conflict in rural districts 
 between the old view of taking account primarily 
 of local welfare, and the new view of developing 
 each locality so that it might contribute as much 
 as possible to the prosperity of the realm. The 
 maintenance of the township, as an economic unit, 
 and of its customary cultivation, was inconsistent 
 with employing the soil of England to the best pur- 
 pose as regards the nation as a whole. The landlords 
 became, during the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries, the willing agents of the change by which 
 the management of the land was controlled more 
 and more with the view of increasing the food supply 
 and meeting the requirements of the realm as a 
 whole.
 
 v] The Elizabethan Realm 103 
 
 The merchants and manufacturers, who had had 
 the tradition of subordinating personal interests to 
 the welfare of a civic community, also began to 
 realise that, in the larger circle which was opening 
 up to them, political action was the basis on which 
 their pecuniary success rested. They were no longer 
 content to cater for the town market, or buy and 
 sell to merchants who visited this country; they 
 were anxious to push their trade and have access 
 to distant markets. The opportunities for trading 
 abroad, and for engaging in profitable commerce, 
 depended on the concessions that the Crown secured 
 for them from foreign powers, or the privileges 
 accorded to such associations as the East India 
 Company, or the Hudson Bay Company. The 
 interests of the manufacturers who catered for 
 distant markets, and of the richer merchants, were 
 bound up with those of the realm, and trade and 
 industry were directly dependent on the success of 
 the Crown in securing and enforcing the privileges 
 of subjects. 
 
 There can be no more striking testimony to the 
 strength of the sentiment of loyalty to the Crown, 
 in England in the seventeenth century, than the 
 fact that in spite of so many discouragements the 
 tradition was so deeply rooted among the American
 
 104 Modern Social Problems [CH. 
 
 colonists. One might have supposed that in New 
 England it would have been extinguished altogether. 
 The Pilgrim Fathers came of a stock which was 
 thoroughly dissatisfied with the action of King 
 Charles I and his ministers, and neither the Restora- 
 tion monarchy, nor the Hanoverians, would commend 
 the institution of royalty to them. They were 
 conscious of many disabilities in the restrictions 
 imposed on their trade and development; they 
 seemed to profit little by the protection which 
 Britain afforded against France, and their distant 
 sovereign did not show an intelligent sympathy in 
 regard to them or their affairs. And yet the tie with 
 the Crown was one which many of them were by 
 no means ready to break ; their loyalty entailed an 
 immense amount of suffering at the time of the War 
 of Independence on the loyalists of Massachusetts 1 . 
 
 (iii) The Nation and its Dependencies. 
 
 The political sentiment which was dominant in 
 the country in the eighteenth century was very 
 different from that which had prevailed in the time 
 of Elizabeth. The sentiment of loyalty to the 
 Crown had waned during the distractions of the Civil 
 War, and the disappointments of the Restoration; 
 
 1 Spark, The Loyalists of Massachusetts.
 
 v] The Nation and its Dependencies 105 
 
 but on the other hand new ambitions were being 
 opened up. England from being an unimportant 
 kingdom had grown to be the victor over Spain, 
 and a rival to France in a struggle for world power. 
 She was no longer called on to defend her own shores, 
 but she was eager to preserve the possibilities of 
 expansion which then lay within her reach. Such 
 defensive warfare is closely akin to aggression; 
 Englishmen, and especially the monied men, were 
 keenly alive to the political importance of main- 
 taining and developing the oversea dependencies 
 of England. Parliament threw itself heartily into 
 this aim and passed measure after measure which 
 was intended to establish a solidarity of interests 
 by inducing private men to direct their energies 
 into fields which were of importance for the nation 
 and its dependencies considered as a whole. 
 
 The landed interest was encouraged by the Corn 
 Bounty Act to devote more attention to the raising 
 of corn ; and during the eighteenth century agricul- 
 tural improvement was being steadily pushed on, 
 sometimes by sinking capital and reclaiming waste 
 land, and sometimes by introducing new crops. 
 The most important improvement, however, con- 
 sisted in doing away with customary cultivation, 
 and common pasturing on the waste, in favour of 
 separate holdings, so that the soil could be well
 
 106 Modern Social Problems [CH. 
 
 worked, while the danger of its becoming exhausted 
 was diminished. The outward and visible sign of this 
 change being carried through was the enclosure of 
 common fields and the common waste; and this 
 again afforded conditions which were favourable to 
 improved husbandry of every kind. Farming became 
 a fashionable hobby, and the pioneers of improve- 
 ment made rapid progress, though there was frequent 
 complaint of easy going men who lagged behind. 
 
 There was an immense increase in agricultural 
 production and an addition to the food supply of 
 the nation ; but this result was not secured without 
 incidental loss ; the more enterprising and intelligent 
 elements in the rural districts prospered, but there 
 were many who could not adapt themselves to the 
 new system. The most serious change was due to 
 the fact that production on a large scale was specially 
 remunerative in the eighteenth century, and that 
 the small holders, like the small masters at a later 
 date, were unable to hold their own. In this way 
 the stepping stones by which thrifty and diligent 
 men had been able to improve their positions were 
 removed, and the agricultural labourer ceased to 
 have the prospect he had formerly enjoyed of 
 improving his position. In the actual process of 
 enclosing, as well as in the improvements which it 
 facilitated, there were often cases of hardship. But
 
 v] The Nation and its Dependencies 107 
 
 on the other hand, there would have been serious 
 loss to the country, if the course of agricultural 
 improvement had been stayed, and no advance had 
 been made in the methods of common cultivation. 
 The landlords, as a class, allied themselves with the 
 forces which made for the progress of the nation, 
 and they shared personally in the increased pros- 
 perity of the nation; they have not, however, 
 habitually made their private gain their sole object, 
 but have kept before them the importance of ordering 
 their affairs and using their influence so as to promote 
 the political power of the realm. 
 
 The position of the monied men was very 
 different; their national importance consisted, not 
 so much in developing the resources of Great Britain 
 itself, though they greatly increased the production 
 of mineral wealth, as in increasing the influence 
 of the country in distant lands, by pushing trade 
 and investing capital in the plantations. They felt 
 that they were engaging in work, which was of 
 great national importance, at their own personal 
 risk ; and they were jealous, under the circumstances, 
 of landed men, who were themselves gainers by their 
 promotion of a public interest. The landowners had 
 a representation in parliament which seemed to 
 them to be quite out of proportion to the sacrifices
 
 Io8 Modern Social Problems [CH. 
 
 they made for the good of the country, especially 
 when the funding system came into operation, and 
 the monied man had lent so largely to the State 
 for its necessities. They were anxious to obtain 
 more power in the State, and were sometimes 
 prepared, like the East India Company, to procure 
 it by bribery and corruption, if they could not secure 
 a fair representation of their interests in parliament. 
 They insisted that their interests would be better 
 attended to if they had increased political power, 
 while they came to recognise that the measures, 
 which statesmen devised with a view to promote 
 a national interest, were not always well adapted 
 to the purpose; they thus paved the way alike for 
 the appeal for increased political power, and for 
 freedom from State interference. The monied men 
 in the eighteenth century started the agitation for 
 parliamentary reform and also used their influence 
 in the direction of laissez faire. 
 
 Meanwhile another influence was at work ; there 
 were signs, before the close of the eighteenth century, 
 of care on the part of parliament for the unrepre- 
 sented. The tradition of the duty of members of 
 the House of Commons, to bring forward grievances 
 for redress and to call attention to local interests, 
 was supplemented by a sense of duty towards
 
 v] Humanitarian Legislation 109 
 
 those who were unable to speak for themselves 
 and for whose benefit government could interfere, 
 at least by putting down abuses. There were new 
 efforts on the part of parliament to do something 
 for the welfare of the people, and not merely for 
 the material resources of the realm. A revived 
 desire to provide, at public expense, for those who 
 were incapacitated by sickness was shown in the 
 new era of the foundation of hospitals which 
 marked the reign of George II, and the duty of 
 caring for human life was exemplified by the founders 
 of the Royal Humane Society. Parliament was 
 becoming something of a benevolent despot within 
 the realm, when it legislated in regard to the treat- 
 ment of apprentices, and put down the slavery of 
 colliers in Scotland. Nor was this sense of responsi- 
 bility confined to unrepresented classes within the 
 realm; the agitation against the slave trade, and 
 the changes in the administration of the Indian 
 Empire, showed a new determination to exercise 
 British influence with a view to the good of subject 
 peoples. 
 
 The Declaration of Independence and the formal 
 severance of the American Colonies from the Mother 
 Country was an event of great political importance 
 and it marked the parting of the ways between two
 
 no Modern Social Problems [CH. 
 
 branches of the Anglo-Saxon race; the special 
 influence which England exercised on the States of 
 the Union came to an end, henceforth French and 
 subsequently German influence became as strong, 
 if not stronger, than that of England. Americans 
 have not shared in the extraordinary change in 
 political ideas, which has occurred in Great Britain 
 during the last century and a half. Americans have 
 indeed retained much of the tradition of what was 
 current in England in the earlier part of the 
 eighteenth century, though they shook off ideas 
 and sentiments which continued to be accepted 
 and developed in Great Britain ; they came to rely 
 on their own experience instead. The American 
 Colonies could no longer be satisfied to be treated 
 as the mere dependencies of a distant nation ; they 
 did not trust their interests to the benevolent 
 despotism of a parliament in which they had no 
 representation, and they desired to be free to work 
 out their own destiny in the country which they 
 had won back from forest and wilderness. To 
 sacrifice the share they might have in the power and 
 influence of Great Britain seemed a small price to 
 pay for independence. The British parliament has 
 continued, however, to keep before the people of 
 this country the importance of considering the 
 realm, and its power and influence, as a whole ; the
 
 v] The Industrial Revolution in 
 
 lessons as to solidarity of interests which had been 
 impressed on the landed and on the monied men 
 have been diffused more generally among the people. 
 By the lowering of the franchise a larger and larger 
 proportion of the population has come to share in 
 the power of forcing parliament to attend to their 
 interests instead of being left to benevolent despotism 
 of any kind. The responsibilities of power over 
 subject peoples are more generally recognised than 
 ever before, while the colonies are no longer treated 
 as dependencies to be coerced, but as self-governing 
 communities which may co-operate for the common 
 good of the Empire as a whole. 
 
 (iv) The Industrial Revolution and its 
 effects in England. 
 
 It remains for us to indicate some differences 
 of experience within the country which have tended 
 to increase the cleavage between Englishmen and 
 Americans and to affect their attitude of mind 
 towards modern problems. An extraordinary change 
 was wrought in England by the age of invention, 
 and the manner in which long established industrial 
 life was broken up by the introduction of machinery. 
 In a new country, like America, where manufacturing 
 industry was little developed, there was no organised 
 system to be broken up, and the age of invention
 
 112 Modern Social Problems [CH. 
 
 did not cause a revolution, or make any great 
 impression on the public mind. 
 
 The difficulties of the organisation of economic 
 activity, which arise sooner or later in a progressive 
 society, had made themselves felt in England for 
 generations, so far as agriculture was concerned; 
 but there had been no similar difficulty in regard 
 to manufacture, because there had been so little 
 progress in the industrial arts. New industries had 
 been planted, and old manufactures were conducted 
 on a larger scale with more division of labour ; but 
 there was little change in the processes themselves, 
 until the age of invention when both the iron and 
 the textile trades were revolutionised. The effect 
 on the wealth of the country was extraordinary, 
 in the enormous increase of material prosperity; 
 but the effect of the revolution on the people engaged 
 in manufacture was so disastrous that the public 
 conscience was awakened. The public mind was 
 gradually forced to recognise that the monied man 
 must not be content to pursue his business with a 
 view to his own private gain, but that the manner 
 in which he conducted it was a matter of concern to 
 the public. The public interest came to be seen in a 
 new light, and not to be viewed merely in its bearing 
 on the political power and influence of the realm, 
 but also with regard to the condition of human lives
 
 v] Modern Inventions 113 
 
 within the country. The increase of material goods 
 and the attainment of industrial supremacy were 
 not the greatest gain which has come to England 
 from the age of invention ; it was the occasion when 
 she learned the lesson that the mere pursuit of 
 private interest in matters of business gives rise to 
 terrible inhumanities, and that it is necessary, not 
 only for landed but for monied men, to keep public 
 considerations in view, as well as pecuniary gain, 
 in the conduct of business. 
 
 Modern inventions, as they are introduced 
 throughout the world, cannot fail to make a change 
 in the position of workmen trained in old methods. 
 The relative importance of the individual workman, 
 as compared with the machinery and the organising 
 power which are supplied by the capitalist, has 
 diminished considerably. The product is far greater, 
 but the labourer's proportionate share in the process 
 of production is not so large as it was formerly. 
 This problem has to be faced in all the countries 
 which have been or are being affected by the intro- 
 duction of modern mechanism and modern methods 
 of organisation. But in no land has the effect of 
 these inventions on the position of the workmen 
 been more severely felt than in Britain. This was 
 the first country in which the old industrial organisa- 
 tion was undermined, and no one could foresee or 
 
 C. 8
 
 H4 Modern Social Problems [CH. 
 
 attempt to guard against the results; and owing 
 to the special circumstances of the time the suffering 
 caused by the Industrial Revolution was widespread 
 and intense. 
 
 The staple industry in England, the manufacture 
 of drapery, had been, for the most part, carried on 
 as a by-occupation, or subsidiary industry, by those 
 who were also engaged in farming on a small scale. 
 At the beginning of the nineteenth century, when 
 the manufacturing activities of the country were 
 being concentrated in factory towns where water 
 power was available, the opportunity of making a 
 good living, by this combination of employments, 
 was withdrawn from the men who resided with 
 their families in rural districts. So long as they 
 could combine farming with manufacturing they 
 had been comfortably off ; but as soon as the oppor- 
 tunities of employment at home in manufacturing 
 were withdrawn, they were unable to make a living 
 on farm employment alone. And this deficit occurred 
 in their family budgets at the very time when English 
 agriculture itself was being conducted in difficult 
 conditions. Up to 1770, England had been a wheat 
 exporting country. The demand from abroad for 
 wheat rendered it possible for the grower to depend 
 on getting a remunerative price for his crop whether
 
 v] Clothiers and Farmers 115 
 
 it was large or small. Twenty years later, after 
 1790, England ceased to be able to support her 
 increased population with the products of her own 
 soil, and became a corn importing country; there 
 were, in consequence, great fluctuations in the price 
 of corn. From the consumer's point of view, the 
 result was serious, and attempts were made for 
 several successive years to stimulate the import of 
 corn, until it was urged that the wiser policy would 
 be to endeavour to stimulate the home production 
 of corn so that we might once more rely for susten- 
 ance on our internal resources. Under both these 
 schemes the fluctuations of price continued. In a 
 plentiful year the crop might be unremunerative 
 if prices fell, while the effects in a bad year would 
 also be a strain on the resources of a farmer. It 
 was not practical, in the conditions of existing agri- 
 culture, to give a substantial increase of wages 
 which should make up in the family budget for the 
 loss of earnings in spinning and weaving; and the 
 disastrous experiment was tried of tiding over the 
 period of strain by making allowances to supplement 
 the wages of rural labourers. Without attempting 
 to carry out the matter in further detail, we 
 can see that at the close of the eighteenth 
 century and the beginning of the nineteenth, it 
 was impossible for the small farmer or labourer 
 
 82
 
 n6 Modern Social Problems [CH. 
 
 who was employed on the land to make a good 
 living. 
 
 The introduction of machinery caused a serious 
 depression among those engaged in agriculture; 
 and this reacted most disastrously on those who 
 were employed in manufacturing. If they had had 
 a prospect of making a living on a farm, the weavers, 
 who were dissatisfied with the conditions of employ- 
 ment in manufacturing, could have turned their 
 attention to the prospects of improving their position 
 by settling on the land. In England at the be- 
 ginning of the nineteenth century the artisan had no 
 such alternative. He has had to stick to his trade 
 or to be wholly idle. During the first quarter of 
 the nineteenth century, the competition of capi- 
 talists and the fluctuations of trade drove down the 
 wages of factory labour to a very low level, and 
 there was no standard set, by the possibilities of 
 earning a living from the soil, which served as a barrier 
 to prevent wages from falling to starvation rates. 
 The starvation rates of wages were not only an evil 
 in themselves, but they were an obstacle to the 
 introduction of improved conditions of work. The 
 manufacturers held that the low money wages were 
 the cause of all the suffering of the hands, and 
 protested that the shortening of hours would
 
 v] State Supervision 117 
 
 probably do more harm than good. But the eyes 
 of the public had been opened, and they insisted 
 that in the general interest of the country humani- 
 tarian considerations should be directly taken into 
 account in the organisation of industry. 
 
 Elizabeth had brought home their responsibilities 
 to the landed interest, by creating administrative 
 machinery for economic purposes; and the nine- 
 teenth century saw the creation of new machinery 
 for humanitarian objects. This could hardly have 
 been attempted but for the fact that there had been 
 an extraordinary improvement in administration of 
 every kind. At the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century, officialism was so tedious and so ineffective 
 that no one would willingly see any duty taken 
 over by an incompetent government department. 
 But experience of the greatly increased departmental 
 activities, which came into being during the nine- 
 teenth century, has shown that the fear of officialism 
 may be exaggerated. There is now diligent super- 
 vision by the State over every department of industry, 
 and this gives the opportunity for devising better 
 measures to correct abuses, while the most careless 
 employer is kept awake to a sense of his responsi- 
 bilities. In the present day, competition is very 
 keen, and the margin of profit on which an employer 
 can count is very small. Business is organised on
 
 n8 Modern Social Problems [en. 
 
 a large scale, and the master or managing director 
 has less personal knowledge of his employees and 
 less freedom for personal action, than he had in 
 the days of domestic industry. In the past monied 
 men have often been very public spirited in the 
 way they spent their money, but public considera- 
 tions have not seemed to affect their methods of 
 making it. But the employer is far more conscious 
 now of the necessity of trying to rise to his responsi- 
 bilities. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, 
 there were some employers, like Sir Robert Peel, 
 who were thoroughly sympathetic with those they 
 employed and eager to promote their welfare. But 
 the general standard was different, for the public 
 did not expect the employer to take much account 
 of the social condition or welfare of factory hands. 
 It was held that the capitalist had done his duty 
 to the community by undertaking the risks of enter- 
 prise so as to increase national wealth. But no one 
 expected him to recognise more than the cash 
 nexus in his dealings with his workmen. During 
 the last hundred years public expectations have 
 entirely changed, and no capitalist can ignore them 
 even if he desired to do so. The provision which 
 is made, when new coalfields are opened up, for 
 the comfort of miners by the directors of public 
 companies, who are responsible to the shareholders,
 
 v] Organised Labour 119 
 
 compares very favourably with the best that was 
 done by generous men at the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century. Before the middle of the nine- 
 teenth century the public conscience was thoroughly 
 roused as to the evils of the factory system, and the 
 mischief that was being done to national life by 
 the over-working of women and children; and the 
 capitalists could no longer disclaim responsibility 
 for their dependents. The gathering of crowds of 
 employees in factories brought to light evils that 
 had probably been going on unheeded in the domestic 
 system, and so rendered it possible to introduce 
 effective supervision. The immense development of 
 the administrative work of the State, in taking account 
 of the conditions of labourers and constantly trying 
 to improve them, has been a great achievement. 
 
 Organised labour in Britain is no longer compelled 
 to accept what the beneficence of other classes 
 affords, but is powerful enough to engage for itself 
 in a struggle to maintain and improve the standard 
 of life. When the natural standard, which is given 
 by the conditions of employment in the land, was 
 broken down, the Trade Unionists set themselves 
 to establish and maintain an artificial standard by 
 means of combination among themselves. The 
 methods they have adopted have sometimes brought 
 unfair pressure on independent labourers; and it
 
 I2O Modern Social Problems [CH. 
 
 is possible to attach exaggerated importance to the 
 object they have in view. There are grounds for 
 saying that the landed interest and the monied 
 interest have in turn fallen into the error of regarding 
 the interest of their class as typical of that of the 
 community and attending to it exclusively; and 
 Trade Unionists are in danger of forgetting that the 
 prosperity of the community, in the long run and 
 on the whole, must be kept in view as well as the 
 interests of labour in the present. 
 
 (v) The awakening of the British conscience. 
 
 Englishmen of all classes and of all political 
 parties, at the opening of the twentieth century, 
 seem to have awakened to the defects in modern 
 society. They do not share the optimism of the 
 Early Victorian times, when it seemed that if a 
 few simple changes were effected, we should enter 
 on a sort of millennium. We look back on the age 
 of invention and are impressed by the enormous 
 changes which have been brought about in the 
 command of man over nature, while we cannot but 
 acknowledge that comparatively little has been 
 achieved in improving the conditions of individual 
 human lives. But yet there is a new hope of 
 effecting a remedy. Much has been accomplished 
 by State intervention in regard to factories and
 
 v] Laissez faire 121 
 
 workshops and mines, and the hygienic conditions 
 of town and country life, and there is a widely 
 diffused feeling that the community has the power, 
 if it would only take the trouble, to put down the 
 most obvious evils in modern society, and that there 
 is a duty to make the attempt. So far there is a 
 general agreement, even among those who differ 
 most widely as to the remedies which it is worth 
 while to try. The public conscience has been 
 aroused, and there is a widespread sense of duty 
 to do more by State action for the welfare of the 
 people. 
 
 This awakening of the public conscience in regard 
 to duty has involved the discarding of opinions 
 which were generally accepted during the nineteenth 
 century. It no longer seems sufficient to measure 
 national welfare in pecuniary terms which serve if 
 we are only thinking of material wealth; and it 
 is no longer possible to hold that the State fulfils 
 its function if it maintains law and order, and 
 leaves private individuals free to pursue their own 
 interests as actively as possible. No one now relies 
 on the regenerative effect of crude self-interest ; the 
 doctrine of laissez faire has been abandoned in one 
 department after another; and those who still 
 cling to it assume, on the part of individual citizens, 
 a high development of the altruistic habit of
 
 122 Modern Social Problems [CH. 
 
 regarding the future welfare of this country as a 
 personal interest of their own. 
 
 The doctrine of laissez faire was so plausible and 
 there was so much to be said in its favour a century 
 ago that it secured a very firm hold upon the public 
 mind. It seemed that it was unnecessary for the 
 government to cultivate the virtues of a benevolent 
 despot, and that it ought to stand aside while private 
 men pursued their own interests. Reformers, political 
 and economic, felt how much material progress had 
 been hampered in the past by the unwise inter- 
 ference of authority or by the power of vested 
 interests ; and they believed that the greatest good 
 of the community can be best attained by giving 
 the greatest freedom to individuals and by reducing 
 the activities of the State within the narrowest 
 possible limits. This view was elaborated later by 
 Herbert Spencer; and it seems almost a truism to 
 say that as, at any given moment, the State consists 
 of certain individuals, the aggregate of individual 
 interests must be identical with the interests of the 
 State as a whole. It has been urged that the State, 
 apart from the individuals which compose it, is 
 a mere nonentity, that each individual is the best 
 judge of his own interest, and that by giving free 
 play for the pursuit of individual interests, the 
 interest of the whole will be best secured. The
 
 v] The Mechanism of Society 123 
 
 State has thus been regarded as a mere policeman 
 whose business it is to safeguard the pursuit of 
 private interests, and the conception of duty to 
 the State, or of any obligation to serve the State, 
 seems to fall into the background. On this view 
 social salvation may be hoped for as emerging from 
 the free play of interests ; and the success of many 
 experiments in the associating of individuals for the 
 pursuit of common interests, such as co-operation 
 and co-partnership, seems to show how far this 
 principle will carry us in a right direction and how 
 much we may hope from it. 
 
 The police theory of the State is not only plausible 
 but it has had powerful support from outside. It 
 is approved by economists who have found it con- 
 venient, for the purpose of examining the production 
 and distribution of wealth, to regard society as a 
 mechanism ; and this is undoubtedly convenient as 
 a means of stating economic problems at any given 
 time, and examining the play of economic forces 
 in detail. The conception of a mechanism is appro- 
 priate to progressive societies, for short periods and 
 for particular places, but it is not to be relied upon 
 for long periods or as supplying principles from which 
 practical guidance can be derived. It is an inadequate 
 conception, for a progressive society is not a mere
 
 124 Modern Social Problems [CH. 
 
 mechanism 1 , it lives and grows ; its advance cannot 
 be gauged by merely mechanical tests. A civilised 
 society, like any other living organism, is continually 
 absorbing and assimilating fresh elements and dis- 
 carding what is worn out. There are many symptoms 
 by which we can note the existence of disease or judge 
 of healthy vitality in a community, but there is 
 no definite standard by which we can measure its 
 progress accurately in the past, nor can we lay down 
 cut and dried formulae to secure that progress in 
 the future shall be made on the best possible lines. 
 Economists who are content to consider society 
 as a mechanism and to be satisfied with a police 
 state, which gives free play for individual interests, 
 neglect the element of time. In a progressive 
 society the interests, of which the aggregate of 
 individuals at the present time are conscious, are 
 not the same as the aggregate interests of the 
 persons who will form the community in the future. 
 There must be the sacrifice of the interests of those 
 who are concerned in maintaining the conditions of 
 the present, if there is to be a change for the better 
 
 1 The unscientific character of much of the current treat- 
 ment of economic problems has been frequently exposed. 
 Compare my British Association paper in Credit Industry and 
 the War, edited by Prof. Kirkaldy, p. 256; see also my 
 article in the Economic Review, n. 25, and my letter in reply 
 to Prof. Marshall, Academy, I Oct. 1892.
 
 v] Neglect of public duties 125 
 
 in the future. Where private interests have free 
 play there is a danger of the ruthless sacrifice of 
 individuals to the exigencies of the progress of 
 society and it is only by the cultivation of a sense 
 of duty, towards the less energetic and progressive 
 members of society, that the incidental evils can be 
 reduced to a minimum and the welfare of society in 
 the future attained with the minimum of incidental 
 loss in the present. The view of the State as merely 
 concerned in matters of police is not adequate even 
 as regards the economic welfare of the community. 
 
 This theory of the State has also found supporters 
 from the religious side, in those who have concen- 
 trated attention on private and personal duty and 
 have minimised the duties of citizenship. The 
 Quakers have taken this point of view exclusively, 
 they have felt it right to abstain from public office 
 and to take no part in the banishment of crime by 
 methods which are not open to the private indi- 
 vidual ; nor do they acknowledge a duty to the State 
 of taking up arms in the defence of the realm. 
 This disparagement of the State 1 as an earthly 
 
 1 The claim of the Quakers that the cultivation of private 
 duty has proved sufficient to secure public benefits is hardly 
 borne out in the cases which are most commonly alleged. 
 
 The progress of the Anti-Slavery Movement within the 
 Quaker body was exceedingly slow, whereas rapid progress 
 was effected when Clarkson and Wilberforce made it a matter
 
 126 Modern Social Problems [CH. 
 
 authority is inconsistent with any sense of religious 
 duty in public affairs. If the function of religion 
 is confined to that of personal life there can be no 
 religious inspiration or guidance in the doing of 
 public duties and secular affairs are inevitably left 
 to the play of selfish interests. 
 
 In spite of its plausibility and of the support 
 which it appears to receive from economic experts 
 and men who are deeply in earnest about religion, 
 the political theory, which reduces the State to the 
 exercise of police functions, and would give free 
 play to private interests, gives an inadequate stand- 
 point for dealing with the problems of modern 
 society. It is essential that there should not only 
 be the play of interests, but the cultivation of duty, 
 and it is here that a new field opens up for political 
 education. Democracy can only flourish if the 
 citizens are led to think of the welfare of the com- 
 munity as a whole in all their public duties and in 
 all the activities in which they engage. The man 
 who is content to use his power and influence for 
 the prosecution of his own interests, and for 
 endeavouring to get as much as he can out of the 
 
 of Parliamentary agitation. The peace with the Indians 
 which Pennsylvania enjoyed was not to be wholly ascribed 
 to the pacifist attitude of Penn. Parkman, Conspiracy of 
 Pontiac, I. 80, 85.
 
 v] Private Interests 127 
 
 State, is not dignified by the possession of the powers 
 of citizenship. To be worthy of his position as a 
 free citizen he must cultivate the effort to do what 
 he can to serve the public, and cultivate a sense of 
 duty to the community as a whole. 
 
 The opinion that the function of the State is 
 rightly limited to the maintenance of law and order 
 so that private interests can have free play, appears 
 to have even a firmer hold on American minds than 
 it has among Englishmen, though of course an 
 occasional protest is heard. Mr J. J. Chapman 
 argues that though " It is thought that the peculiar 
 merit of democracy lies in this ; that it gives every 
 man a chance to pursue his own ends. The reverse 
 is true. The merit lies in the assumption imposed 
 upon every man that he shall serve his fellow men. 
 ...The concentration of every man on his own 
 interest has been the danger and not the safety of 
 democracy ; for democracy contemplates that every 
 man shall think first of the State and next of himself. 
 This is its only justification. In so far as it is operated 
 by men who are thinking first of their own interests 
 and then of the State, its operation is distorted 1 ." 
 But Mr Chapman is exceptional and can hardly be 
 regarded as a typical American. Journalists who 
 
 1 Causes and Consequences, 121.
 
 128 Modern Social Problems [CH. 
 
 cater for the ordinary newspaper reader seem to be 
 satisfied with the view that democratic institutions 
 are themselves a boon, without realising the import- 
 ance of using them so that they shall be educative 
 in the duties of citizenship. 
 
 The dominance in America of the view that the 
 State is only concerned in giving free play to indi- 
 viduals is easily accounted for, when we remember 
 how sparsely the old tradition of loyalty was trans- 
 planted, and how difficult it was to form anew a 
 conception of a nation for which sacrifices should be 
 made. The elements of English society which were 
 by position and trading most habituated to public 
 spirit did not as a rule emigrate in large numbers 
 to the plantations. The landed gentry were con- 
 scious of the responsibility to the Crown for the 
 order which they maintained in their own locality; 
 they looked to the Crown as the source of the honours 
 to which they aspired, and thus their conduct was 
 inspired by a sense of duty to the whole in the 
 management of their private affairs; but though 
 there were many cadets of county families who 
 found their way to Virginia 1 , this influence was not 
 
 1 Mr Ingle observes of county government in Virginia 
 "The dominant idea was gradation of power from the Governor 
 downward, not upward from the people," Local Institutions in 
 Virginia, Johns Hopkins Political Studies, Series in. 97.
 
 v] Police Theory of the State 129 
 
 prominent in other parts of the country. The 
 tradition that office was an honour was maintained 
 in the Old Dominion, and Washington had a high 
 ideal of the position of those who were called to 
 public office. But throughout the country generally, 
 where private and local interests were dominant, 
 office was too often regarded as a burden, and a man 
 with important affairs of his own was inclined to 
 shirk it if he could ; nor did the English townsmen, 
 who were accustomed to subordinate their personal 
 successes to the good of the community and were 
 examples of civic or national patriotism, contribute 
 largely to the population of the colonies. They 
 were inclined to look on the colonies as a field for 
 the investment of their capital; and though they 
 were prepared to send factors to do their business, 
 they had little sense of developing civilised life 
 in a new world; indeed their public spirit, such as 
 it was, was repellant to the Americans. The mer- 
 chants of the East India Company, and others, 
 regarded their commercial undertakings as sub- 
 ordinate to the prosperity of Great Britain, but 
 the colonist was irritated by efforts to treat the 
 territory in which he lived as merely a subordinate 
 part of an Empire in ruling which he had no share, 
 and it was long before any other conception of the 
 State as a whole grew to be so definite as to exercise 
 c. 9
 
 130 Modern Social Problems [CH. 
 
 a conscious influence in the management of affairs. 
 It was difficult for the citizen of a vast country to 
 realise its solidarity or to feel that the nation had 
 a claim to make and guidance to give in regard to 
 his own personal conduct of affairs. It was not until 
 the conclusion of the Great Civil War that the various 
 States were welded together so closely that Americans 
 became fully conscious not only of their tie to their 
 own State, but of their citizenship in one great 
 nation. 
 
 American civilisation has grown up from the 
 federation of small units; it has, as a matter of 
 fact, illustrated the ideas of civil government which 
 formed part of the doctrine of Locke ; though there 
 was no original contract, the members of each town- 
 ship were associated together for the preservation 
 of their own interests. It was the recognition of the 
 larger and larger interests which they had in common 
 that led to the formation of other organs of govern- 
 ment. The supremacy of private interest as that 
 for the promotion of which government exists, has 
 dominated the whole development, and is deeply 
 ingrained in the political life of the country. The 
 colonists failed to carry with them the English 
 sense of public spirit ; and circumstances during the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries gave little
 
 V] The awakening of public conscience 131 
 
 opportunity for the development of a public spirit 
 of their own. 
 
 Nor did the experience of Americans make them 
 realise the necessity of supplementing the action 
 of private interests by greater care for the public; 
 partly owing to the wide extent of country, partly 
 to the independence of each settler, there was 
 neither opportunity nor occasion to provide the 
 hospitals and other public institutions which were 
 being founded during the eighteenth century in 
 England for the preservation and protection of 
 human life. In particular, America was late in 
 developing her industrial activities; there were 
 citizens like Jefferson, who thought that demo- 
 cratic ideals could be best maintained by a rural 
 population. Those who introduced manufactures 
 preferred modern methods of organisation, and there 
 was no call for any of the American States to inter- 
 fere in favour of apprentices ; the Americans had no 
 experience, such as that which called forth the agita- 
 tion of Lord Shaftesbury and other philanthropists, 
 and led to the restriction of industrial capitalists. 
 
 But times have changed. America has long 
 since developed a great industrial life, and some 
 of its characteristic evils have appeared. Vigorous 
 efforts have been made in many quarters by philan- 
 thropic associations, to promote the welfare of 
 
 92
 
 132 Modern Social Problems [CH. V 
 
 particular classes in one part or another of the 
 United States. During the last decade there has 
 been some successful agitation for legislation in 
 particular cases; but after all America is a young 
 country, great areas of her territory are imper- 
 fectly developed, and she may have to go through 
 experience which is similar to that of England during 
 the Industrial Revolution. The day seems not to 
 be very far distant when there will no longer be 
 land available for the labourer, with a minimum of 
 capital, to settle and produce what is requisite for 
 his own subsistence. When the land is so fully 
 occupied that America becomes partly dependent 
 for food from abroad, a crisis may arise similar to 
 that which occurred in England at the beginning 
 of last century, and the pressure on the industrial 
 population is likely to become more severe. It 
 seems not improbable, however, that before that 
 day arrives the public conscience may be aroused 
 in America as it has been in England, to the necessity 
 of bringing public considerations habitually to bear 
 on the play of private interests, and of training 
 monied men to take more account of their social 
 responsibilities, not only in the way in which they 
 spend their money, but in the methods by which 
 they make it.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF NATIONAL 
 POWER AND INFLUENCE 1 
 
 (i) The tradition of Insular Policy. 
 
 It is very interesting to notice persistence of 
 type, and to see how Americans maintain habits of 
 thought that betray their English ancestry. Ameri- 
 can speech has preserved many phrases and idioms 
 that have dropped out of use in Great Britain; 
 and something similar has occurred in the political 
 sphere, where Americans have retained a point of 
 view which Britons generally speaking have come 
 to discard. America takes her stand firmly on the 
 wisdom of the views she has inherited, as to the 
 desirability of keeping clear from entanglement 
 with other peoples and their affairs, in the hope of 
 being able to pursue a path of peaceful prosperity 
 uninterruptedly. 
 
 This had been the generally accepted policy of 
 
 1 Empire Club, Columbia University, New York.
 
 134 Responsibilities of National Power [CH. 
 
 England for centuries; it dates as far back as the 
 union of the two Houses under Henry VII, who 
 laid the foundations for the peaceful union of 
 England and Scotland under one Crown. Henry VII 
 kept aloof from quarrels abroad, and raised the 
 Crown to a position of unexampled power within 
 the realm; and he hoped that, by developing the 
 resources and power of the country, he might be 
 free to exercise a determining influence in the 
 struggles between rival European powers. Wolsey 
 endeavoured to carry on the same policy; to 
 Elizabeth it was a matter of vital importance that 
 the realm should not be absorbed either by France 
 or Spain. She has become a popular heroine chiefly 
 because of her success in playing off the catholic 
 powers against one another; and this negative 
 attitude, while not calculated to rouse enthusiasm, 
 has won the approval of all parties in turn. The 
 English public disliked the project of a Spanish 
 marriage, and King James's efforts to influence 
 continental affairs by means of this alliance ; Whigs 
 resented Charles II's close connection with France, 
 as much as the Tories distrusted the Hanoverian 
 connection and the manner in which England came 
 to be concerned in continental questions; while 
 Walpole was eager to maintain the peace policy 
 at all costs. Generations of Englishmen had been
 
 vi] The tradition of Insular Policy 135 
 
 bred and born with the view that it was the best 
 policy for an island realm to develop her own 
 resources and to leave other peoples alone; and 
 the American colonists were naturally inclined to 
 apply this doctrine to their own case, especially 
 after the removal of the danger of attack from 
 the French in Canada and the Ohio Valley. Many 
 of the colonists felt that they had no longer any 
 direct interest in the struggle between Great Britain 
 and France; they saw no reason why they should 
 be dragged into a conflict of European nations in 
 which they had no immediate concern, and they 
 refused to allow the development of their own 
 country to be controlled in the interests of the 
 political necessities of Great Britain. 
 
 Although they were engaged time after time, 
 during the Middle Ages, in supporting the claims 
 of kings to an extension of their territories, there 
 was a deep feeling among Englishmen that they 
 should only engage in conflicts in self-defence, but 
 this implied that England should make the most 
 of her insular position and obtain the command of 
 the sea. The Danish invasions had called forth 
 maritime activity under King Alfred; and the 
 command of the seas became a cardinal point in 
 the Plantagenet policy of building up a commercial
 
 136 Responsibilities of National Power [CH. 
 
 Empire in which Gascony, Flanders and England 
 should co-operate to promote the prosperity of the 
 territories which were ruled by English Kings. 
 The Libel of English Policy is the earliest commercial 
 tract written in English, and it insists on the import- 
 ance of keeping the narrow seas : an effective mari- 
 time force was necessary, not only to protect 
 commerce, but to defend the coasts from the raids 
 of enemies. Piracy was practised as a by-occupation 
 by many shipmen when trade was dull, and the 
 whole line of the coast in the fifteenth century was 
 exposed to frequent depredations. The necessity 
 for policing the seas and defending the coasts 
 continued to be felt in the seventeenth century, 
 when Baltimore, in Ireland, was devastated by 
 Algerian pirates; and Charles I endeavoured by 
 means of ship-money to raise a fleet which should 
 give effective protection to the coast and to English 
 commerce in the Mediterranean. 
 
 At the time of the discovery of the New World 
 and the Reformation, the English determination 
 to secure naval superiority took a new form ; when 
 she was threatened with attack, counter attacks and 
 aggression became necessary as a means of self- 
 defence. England found that her independence and 
 her institutions were menaced by Spain, while the 
 whole world appeared to be given over to a type
 
 vi] The tradition of Insular Policy 137 
 
 of civilisation which she detested. England, by 
 her success in destroying the Spanish Armada, not 
 only secured her own independence, but succeeded 
 in obtaining a footing as a world-power. Englishmen 
 in the Elizabethan time seem to have gone far 
 beyond Elizabeth personally in their aims and 
 ambitions; they awakened to a sense of mission 
 to protect a portion of the newly discovered countries 
 from being exploited by Spain and absorbed in the 
 Spanish system. They began to aim at the sove- 
 reignty of the sea, not merely for the sake of defence 
 or dynastic ambition, but as the means of fulfilling 
 the destiny of the English people. 
 
 The success of France, in becoming the dominant 
 influence in Europe and establishing far-reaching 
 connections both in India and in America, gave 
 English policy a new direction, but did not alter 
 its fundamental character. The main object was 
 that of maintaining a successful rivalry with a 
 great antagonist. All through the eighteenth century 
 a succession of wars was waged for this purpose, 
 and it affected all national activities in time of peace 
 as well. Other considerations were subordinated 
 to that of building up national power in the hope 
 of establishing effective superiority over France, as 
 a nation with large colonial possessions and great 
 prestige. Many regulations were made with this
 
 138 Responsibilities of National Power [CH. 
 
 object in regard to the resources of Great Britain, 
 and the schemes which were laid down for colonial 
 development were all devised with the view of 
 making the resources of the colonies subservient to 
 the political power of the mother country. It was 
 by the command of the sea that Britain was able 
 to foil her French antagonists both in India and in 
 Canada; naval superiority continued to be an 
 essential condition for attaining political power, till 
 it was firmly established at Trafalgar. 
 
 The conquest of Canada gave the English 
 colonies on the Atlantic coast a new sense of security. 
 They were free from any possibility of maritime 
 attack, and the traditional English policy of main- 
 taining command at sea ceased to appeal to them. 
 Their eyes were turned to expansion by land and 
 to controlling the hinterland; their maritime 
 interests were merely commercial, and did not 
 involve such political questions as that of national 
 security. Since the Declaration of Independence 
 Americans have carried on the great work of planting 
 the interior and the frontier has gradually been 
 rolled farther and farther back 1 . The waves of 
 settlement from the East and from the West have 
 
 1 F. J. Turner, Report of American Historical Association, 
 1893, in. 199.
 
 vi] The tradition of Insular Policy 139 
 
 at last met; but America has been so much con- 
 cerned with internal development that there has 
 been comparatively little occasion to modify her 
 views about foreign relationships; she could con- 
 tinue, with some brief exceptions, to be habitually 
 indifferent in regard to sea power. There is an 
 extraordinary unanimity throughout the States as 
 to the desirability of holding aloof from foreign 
 entanglements of any kind; this rests on an in- 
 herited tradition and is an accepted maxim with all 
 parties. The policy of aloofness or isolation which 
 was developed in an island realm has proved appro- 
 priate to a people who inhabit a country so widely 
 separated from the Old World. 
 
 (ii) The claim to arbitrate. 
 
 This sense of detachment has led Americans to 
 cherish the national ambition of being recognised as 
 a dispassionate mediator in the disputes of other 
 nations. As England in Tudor times seemed to be 
 cut out for the position of the tongue of the balance, 
 when opposing claims are being weighed, so America 
 now hopes to exercise a preponderating influence 
 in maintaining peace and deciding disputes through- 
 out the world. The attempt to maintain a negative 
 policy and avoid entanglements seems to be con- 
 sistent with the far-reaching ambition, which is
 
 140 Responsibilities of National Power [CH. 
 
 cherished by Dr Wilson. "Look abroad," he says 1 , 
 "upon the troubled world. Only America is at 
 peace among all the great powers of the world. 
 Only America is saving her power for her own people. 
 Only America is using her great character, her 
 great strength and her great interest for peace and 
 prosperity. Do you not think it likely that the 
 world will at some time turn to America and say, 
 ' You were right and we were wrong ; you kept your 
 heads, we lost ours, now in your self-possession, 
 coolness and strength may we not turn to you for 
 counsel and assistance ? ' May we not look forward 
 to the time when we shall be called blessed among 
 the nations and the servants of mankind ? " But 
 even though America is a great land of plenty it is 
 doubtful if she is fitted to be a successful arbiter; 
 an arbiter is certainly at an advantage if he possesses 
 the power of enforcing his decision, as the Pope 
 could do by means of spiritual censures, and as the 
 English monarchy could attempt by throwing the 
 weight of its influence on one or other of two sides. 
 
 It is even more important that an arbiter should 
 
 be able to appreciate the rival claims which are 
 
 brought before him and to understand the issues 
 
 at stake. Many Englishmen would be unwilling to 
 
 1 Speech at Indianapolis, 8 Jan. 1915.
 
 vi] The claim to arbitrate 141 
 
 accept the arbitration of the United States, because 
 the experience of Americans has been so exceptional 
 that there is a danger that they would not fully 
 comprehend a delicate situation, (i) Americans 
 have been able to live in practical security from 
 attack, and to dispense with armaments, as they 
 are understood in the modern world: there may 
 be a strike of trolleymen in Cleveland, or of miners 
 in Idaho, that the ordinary police are unable to 
 cope with, and where it is necessary to bring in the 
 military to secure law and order ; but on the whole 
 the maintenance of an army and navy seems 
 unnecessary; and if a nation indulges in it, that 
 nation seems to Americans to be under the suspicion 
 of contemplating aggression on its neighbours. But 
 other peoples may find it necessary to secure them- 
 selves against attack by land or sea, and the main- 
 tenance of armaments is not in itself a proof of 
 hostile intentions. (2) Americans have been satis- 
 fied so far with the conception of the State as merely 
 responsible for maintaining law and order, and have 
 attached supreme importance to the activities of 
 private individuals ; they are inclined to identify 
 the aggregate of private interests with the interest 
 of the state. Private persons can be compen- 
 sated pecuniarily for any wrong done them, and 
 hence it seems that arbitration could always be
 
 142 Responsibilities of N ational Power [CH. 
 
 resorted to, so as to settle the compensation due 
 to private persons. The very conception of political 
 claims and ambitions, such as the security of the 
 realm, which cannot be compromised, and in regard 
 to which no compensation is possible, lies beyond 
 the ordinary American range of thought. But 
 an arbiter ought to take account of communities 
 as a whole, not merely of the persons of which they 
 are composed; and questions may arise which are 
 intimately associated with national life where the 
 analogy of disputes that are brought into civil 
 courts fails us altogether. 
 
 But apart from these general considerations, 
 Americans are inclined to assume that the British 
 Empire now is identical in its aims and objects with 
 the British rule to which their forefathers submitted 
 before the War of Independence. They have for- 
 gotten nothing of their grievances, and they fail to 
 realise how much Englishmen have learned in the 
 time that has intervened. 
 
 (iii) The British Empire in the 
 Twentieth Century. 
 
 As the fall of Quebec set the American colonists 
 free from any fear of external attack by land or 
 sea, so the victory of Trafalgar set Englishmen 
 free from any fear of the rivalry of France as a
 
 vi] Exploiting the Colonies 143 
 
 maritime power. It was the death blow of the old 
 colonial system which had prized the colonies 
 because of the political strength which could be 
 derived from them. The mother country regarded 
 these distant territories as areas from which addi- 
 tional resources might be drawn for the maintenance 
 of the maritime power of the realm. The most 
 complete proof of the abandonment of this view 
 lies in the fact that the mother country no longer 
 attempts to control the economic life of the oversea 
 dominions, but leaves them free to develop along 
 the lines which they find most appropriate for them- 
 selves. At the present time the colonists seem to 
 have reason to fear that if the hegemony of the 
 world passed to Germany, the economic conditions 
 of distant lands would be forced to become sub- 
 servient to the supremacy of German industry. 
 
 When the political object of securing economic 
 control of the colonies was allowed to drop out of 
 sight, the voices of those, who argued that the 
 possession of oversea dominions was a mere vanity 
 and a useless extravagance, began to be exerted 
 more vigorously. From the eighteenth century 
 onwards there were some Englishmen who looked 
 on the colonies with jealousy; it was a matter of 
 common remark that Spain had been weakened by
 
 144 Responsibilities of National Power [CH. 
 
 the effort to develop a colonial empire, and fears 
 were expressed lest, in planting America, England 
 should be drained of money, and of men who could 
 be usefully employed at home. In the eighteenth 
 century Dr Tucker, the Dean of Gloucester, set 
 the fashion of treating the retention of the colonies 
 as a mere question of profit and loss; and demon- 
 strated that the political responsibilities they entailed 
 were so costly that it was absurd to engage in 
 colonisation at all. Sir John Sinclair gave vehement 
 expression to this view 1 : "The whole expenses we 
 have been put to. in consequence of our possessing 
 colonies on the Continent of North America, may 
 be estimated at forty millions, in addition to the 
 charges of at least two wars, which cost us above 
 240 millions more, and which were entered into 
 principally on their account. 
 
 "It is the more necessary to bring forward 
 enquiries into this branch of our expenditure, as 
 the rage for colonisation has not as yet been driven 
 from the councils of this country. We have lost 
 New England; but a New Wales has since started 
 up. How many millions it may cost may be the 
 subject of the calculations of succeeding financiers 
 a century hence, unless by the exertions of some 
 
 1 History of the Public Revenue of the British Empire, 
 3rd edition, II. 101.
 
 vi] Territorial Aggrandisement 145 
 
 able statesman that source of future waste and 
 extravagance is prevented." Distant territories came 
 to be looked upon in relation to commerce, and so 
 far as commerce was concerned the question of 
 allegiance seemed to make very little difference. 
 Trade with the United States had flourished and 
 increased since the Declaration of Independence, 
 and commercial men in Great Britain were opposed 
 to territorial expansion as inconsistent with the 
 interests of the country. They believed that, along 
 whatever lines the colonists found it most convenient 
 to develop the territory, their prosperity was sure 
 to react favourably on the mother country, without 
 any effort on her part. 
 
 From the point of view of the trader, any attempt 
 at fresh territorial aggrandisement was regarded as 
 a costly blunder. There had always been men who 
 felt that oversea possessions involved us in heavy 
 charges for their defence, and who were anxious 
 not to add to that burden. Cromwell would 
 apparently have been ready to cede the interests 
 of England in North America to the Dutch, though 
 he desired to strengthen the English connection with 
 the West Indies ; time after time English statesmen 
 have shown themselves reluctant to add to our 
 possessions. This was particularly noticeable at 
 the close of the Seven Years' War, when England 
 
 c. 10
 
 146 Responsibilities of National Power [CH. 
 
 accepted terms of peace which were most disap- 
 pointing to those who carried through the great 
 achievements of the war. Tangier, Mexico, Cuba, 
 Manilla, Corsica, Buenos Ayres, Cape of Good Hope, 
 Java and the Ionian Islands are places which Great 
 Britain has abandoned of her own accord 1 ; and 
 after the Napoleonic War it came to be generally 
 recognised that territorial aggrandisement had 
 ceased to be to the interest of a maritime empire, 
 though it continues to be an important aim for 
 an empire, such as Great Britain once was and 
 Germany still is, whose resources are based on the 
 possession of lands and not on trade 2 . 
 
 Since the middle of the nineteenth century there 
 has been a reaction in Britain, and a feeling has arisen 
 
 1 W. F. Lord, Lost Possessions of England. 
 
 2 Herr Ortel, the well known Agrarian deputy, writes, 
 ''We must as soon as possible win and utilize as much new 
 land as will enable German agriculture to cover without 
 difficulty the whole requirements of the home population. 
 If the land within the frontiers of the Empire does not suffice, 
 one must look to the acquisition, at the conclusion of peace, 
 of fresh land beyond the frontier. We consider it not only 
 premature but unwise to go into details about eventual 
 acquisitions of territory. But it is not too soon to insist that 
 in any such acquisitions of territory we must keep steadily 
 in view the aim of acquiring new land for agriculture as well 
 as for other purposes. This is in the interest not only of 
 agriculture but of the whole population and of Germany's 
 security for the future." Times, 14 January, 1915.
 
 vi] Maritime Empire 147 
 
 that the policy of a country cannot be dictated by 
 merely pecuniary interests. New political reasons 
 have arisen for maintaining superiority at sea; 
 Great Britain's prosperity is no longer based on 
 the "solid basis of land" when territorial expan- 
 sion was reasonable, but on "the fluctuating basis, 
 trade 1 ." She is no longer able to raise a corn 
 supply that suffices for her population and it is 
 important for the country as a whole to protect 
 the routes along which food is brought to the people 
 of Great Britain, and communications are maintained 
 with all parts of the Empire. Naval superiority is 
 of vital importance to the very existence of a 
 maritime empire, to guard against the interruption 
 of commerce by any hostile powers. Britain has 
 come to be, not so much the workshop of the world, 
 as a great departmental store to which many work- 
 rooms are attached. Her chief interests lie in 
 securing supplies of raw materials and food in 
 plenty, and in extending the markets for her goods. 
 The chief expedient on which Britain has relied to 
 attract new customers and to retain old ones has 
 been her ability to offer good bargains, and it has 
 been her aim to avoid giving any such offence 
 as might lead to the interruption of commercial 
 
 1 Massie quoted by Cunningham, Growth of English 
 Industry and Commerce, n. 578.
 
 148 Responsibilities of National Power [CH. 
 
 relations ; fear of loss of customers has become the 
 cardinal principle of British diplomacy. 
 
 The charge has been brought against the mother 
 country again and again, that she has shown 
 lamentable weakness in waiving claims which were 
 of supreme importance to some colony, in order 
 to propitiate a foreign power. Certainly there is 
 always a strong temptation for a commercial nation 
 to purchase peace at any price; and the weakness 
 with which her statesmen consented to arbitrate 
 about the Alabama claims, without at the same 
 time insisting on compensation for the Fenian raid 
 in Canada 1 , shows how far Britain has been prepared 
 to go rather than run the risk of giving offence. Her 
 own commercial interests lead Britain to be so 
 careful not to press her claims in regard to any 
 disputed point unduly, that Britain's naval superi- 
 ority is the best possible guarantee for the main- 
 tenance of those conditions which are favourable 
 to the prosperity of the world as a whole. And 
 though they may be often irritated at having their 
 political interests disregarded in favour of pecuniary 
 considerations, the oversea dominions find advantage 
 in being parts of a maritime empire. 
 
 They are keenly alive to the interests of trade 
 and the British protection of their commerce ; they 
 
 1 Pope, Siv J. A. Macdonald, n. 85-140.
 
 vi] Imperial Co-operation 149 
 
 have a pecuniary interest in retaining their connec- 
 tion with the mother country. The consciousness 
 of the similarity of the interest of the various parts 
 of the Empire in co-operating as a whole, gives a 
 basis for political connection; while the sentiment 
 as to the possibilities of freedom for self-government 
 which can be enjoyed by the parts of the British 
 Empire is a closer bond of union. The colonies and 
 the mother country form a maritime empire which 
 has a greater pecuniary interest than that of any 
 other peoples in preserving the safety of the seas, 
 while there is also a political interest in preserving 
 the lines of internal communication, 
 
 (iv) Imperial Co-operation. 
 
 The American colonists in the eighteenth century 
 had no experience of British rule as a Benevolent 
 Despotism, and their descendants have difficulty in 
 realising that there has been any great change in 
 the attitude of the English towards their depen- 
 dencies. The impression of the aims of British 
 policy which was stamped on the American mind in 
 1776, was defective even then, and has long since 
 been out of date. Since the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century Great Britain has abandoned any 
 attempt to assimilate other populations to British 
 habits. Every effort is indeed made to insist on the
 
 150 Responsibilities of National Power [CH. 
 
 sanctity of human life but apart from this the British 
 rule endeavours to leave subject peoples free to carry 
 out their own self-development and to fit themselves 
 for life under the conditions which the progressive 
 forces of modern commerce and industry are intro- 
 ducing. In some other polities assimilation is regarded 
 as essential in order that there may be similar con- 
 ditions in one national army; Germany has en- 
 deavoured to assimilate the population of the Polish 
 provinces. The North regarded it as a good reason for 
 going to war that they desired to assimilate the popu- 
 lation of the Southern States to their habits and 
 practice, and to stamp out the traditions and institu- 
 tions of Virginia and her confederates. But attempts 
 of the sort have been deliberately abandoned in the 
 British Empire generally, since the time of the Par- 
 liamentary Union of England and Scotland. The 
 troubles of the seventeenth century, in Great Britain, 
 arose in connection with different attempts to treat 
 the whole island as one nation, and to assimilate the 
 entire population so that they could accept one type 
 of institutions. Charles I and Laud were unsuccessful 
 in their attempt to assimilate the Scots to the 
 English model ; and the Scots failed, in the time of 
 the Westminster Assembly, to induce the English 
 to assimilate themselves to the Scottish system. It 
 was with much hesitation that, at the time of the
 
 vi] Native Standards 151 
 
 English revolution, the hope of welding the whole 
 of Great Britain into one nation was finally aban- 
 doned; but, by the terms of the Union, England 
 agreed to recognise the independent institutions of 
 Scotland, as regards law and religion, while accepting 
 her as a partner in the work of self-government. 
 From that time onwards the attempt to impose a 
 uniformity of habits and practice has been aban- 
 doned, and a new ideal has come to be adopted. 
 Great Britain consciously and deliberately aims at 
 doing for all people within the sphere of her influence 
 what she did, unintentionally and grudgingly, for 
 the American colonists, and giving them such 
 protection by sea and land that they can preserve 
 ancestral traditions and develop political life. It is 
 the aim of British rulers to maintain such law and 
 order that it shall be possible for all the varieties 
 of races, which live within the bounds of the British 
 Empire, to have fair play, so as to maintain their 
 own traditions and to work out their own destiny. 
 Mr Bryan regards the British rule in India as utterly 
 condemned because it has done so little to assimilate 
 Indian women, and model them on European 
 standards, but British rulers try to refrain from 
 outraging native habits. The care which is exercised 
 in this behalf is the best proof that Britain no 
 longer attempts to exploit subject races in her
 
 152 Responsibilities of National Power [CH. 
 
 own interests, but that her aim is to secure the 
 welfare of the people who are subject to her 
 power 1 . 
 
 The beginnings of this awakening of the parlia- 
 ment of Great Britain to a sense of these responsi- 
 bilities can be traced back to the close of the 
 eighteenth century; it was partly humanitarian in 
 character, but it was not an accident that the move- 
 ment should have been closely associated with 
 the Evangelical Revival; for the sense of national 
 responsibility and national duty can be most 
 effectively roused when national life is viewed from 
 a religious standpoint, as Englishmen are taught to 
 do by the use of the Book of Common Prayer, which 
 helps to inculcate political duty. The responsibility 
 of the supreme human authority in the realm to 
 God, is not only declared ceremonially at the coro- 
 nation of the King, but is borne in upon the minds 
 of the subjects by the prayers in which they are 
 constantly invited to join. God is addressed as the 
 Ruler of Princes, and the Governor of all things 
 whose power no creature is able to resist; and the 
 blessing asked for the King is that he may incline 
 to God's will and walk in God's way: there is a 
 similar sense of the duty of magistrates, as in their 
 1 Roosevelt, African and European Addresses, 166.
 
 vi] Responsibility for Subject Races 153 
 
 various capacities ministers of God; and the glory 
 of God is held up as the object at which Parliament 
 should aim, while attention is called to the need for 
 divine guidance in their deliberations. The constant 
 acknowledgment of God in connection with the 
 government of the realm is the best basis for culti- 
 vating a sense of duty and responsibility in all 
 departments of government. 
 
 Though the first signs of this new attitude of 
 mind are to be seen in the religious sphere, the 
 change is also apparent in regard to civil adminis- 
 tration. Public feeling was roused by the eloquence 
 of Burke in his impeachment of Warren Hastings. 
 It has been a grave injustice that, owing to petty 
 spite, this honourable and patriotic man should 
 have been pilloried during his trial, and in Lord 
 Macaulay's Essays', but his trial was the occasion 
 which exposed the possibilities of exploitation under 
 a corrupt administration. A new sense of responsi- 
 bility was awakened; it allied itself with the old 
 enthusiasm for national mission and national destiny, 
 and infused a new spirit into the administration of 
 Indian affairs. With the opening of the nineteenth 
 century, and the reorganisation of the adminis- 
 trative system under Lord Cornwallis, the old evils 
 came to an end ; the Indian Civil Service has come 
 to be an acknowledged model of self-sacrificing
 
 154 Responsibilities of National Power [CH. 
 
 effort on the part of officials for the benefit of the 
 people whom they govern. No pains have been 
 spared in the work of administering even-handed 
 justice to all alike, rich and poor; every effort has 
 been made to respect the institutions and ideals 
 of subject peoples; and the ultimate object of 
 training them to take a real part in governing them- 
 selves has been steadily kept in view. Whatever 
 failures and blunders there may have been, the 
 administration has been infused with an earnest 
 desire to learn by experience, and has been firm in 
 the purpose of governing the great dependency so 
 as to secure the prosperity of the country, and the 
 welfare of native races. 
 
 The problems which confront the administrator 
 are complex and innumerable. The endeavour 
 to maintain a peaceful people in security from 
 powerful neighbours may sometimes necessitate an 
 extension of boundaries, and the annexation of the 
 territory of unruly tribes. The effort to protect 
 human life from plague may often bring the authori- 
 ties into conflict with native tradition; and most 
 difficult of all are the social problems which arise 
 between the settlers and traders who represent 
 progressive forces, and natives who are contented 
 to subsist in a stationary state. In such conditions
 
 Vi] Problems of Empire 155 
 
 an authority of some sort is necessary ; it is impos- 
 sible, either with regard to the resources of the 
 country or to the welfare of the population, to 
 leave private interests uncontrolled in the expecta- 
 tion that they will work out mechanically for the 
 public good. The greatest difficulty of a benevolent 
 despotism is due to the fact that we are living in 
 an age of rapid progress, and that the facilities of 
 communication have brought the most advanced 
 and the most backward peoples into occasional 
 contact. Distant countries have been drawn within 
 the circle of the world's commerce, and are in danger 
 of being exploited to furnish materials for modern 
 industry. The defence of settlers, who have the 
 means of turning the soil of a country to better 
 account, has often led to the expropriation and 
 subsequently to the ruthless destruction of native 
 tribes; and British ideas of what is right in regard 
 to property are so inconsistent with those of many 
 native tribes that it is difficult to avoid the disin- 
 tegration of native society. The accounts of the 
 cruelties perpetrated in connection with the rubber 
 industry show that it is necessary for political 
 authorities to check the mischief that may be 
 wrought on the people of a country, under the 
 pretext of developing its economic resources. It is 
 only gradually and by experience that British
 
 156 Responsibilities of National Power [CH. 
 
 administrators have learned the difficulty of recon- 
 ciling the claims of the pioneers of progress with 
 those of primitive races, and the government is 
 sometimes bitterly criticised for showing undue 
 favour to natives. It might be easy enough to 
 organise society on the basis of developing material 
 resources in the interests of commerce, and allowing 
 the native races to be crushed out, or left in a condi- 
 tion of permanent inferiority. But the British sense 
 of responsibility would not be satisfied if the govern- 
 ment adopted that course. The British public 
 recognise that they are, as rulers of India, concerned 
 not only with making the most of a country, but 
 with making the most of the people of each country 
 whatever that people may be. 
 
 The British sense of responsibility is restricted 
 by the British sense of the limits within which 
 government can wisely and effectively interfere. 
 It is the aim of British rule to leave subject peoples 
 free to carry out their own self-development, and 
 to fit themselves for life under the conditions of 
 progressive society. Those who are best aware of 
 the success which has attended British administra- 
 tion, in fighting the horrors of famine, are also 
 ready to recognise how far there has been failure. 
 It is the glory of British administration that no 
 absurd pretence is maintained of having any
 
 vi] Benevolent Despotism 157 
 
 immunity from mistake; there is a constant effort 
 to learn from experience, to retrieve blunders, and 
 to prevent the recurrence of mistakes. The British 
 Empire is not a mere machine organised so as to 
 attain high efficiency in one department after 
 another, such as can be recorded by statistical 
 tests, but it is a living growth in which all the 
 various elements are given opportunities to co- 
 operate for the development of resources and the 
 progress of mankind. Its life does not consist 
 merely in the play of present-day sordid interests, 
 for it has a heritage of experience and achievement 
 in the past and a conscious responsibility for the 
 future. 
 
 Those who participate in the life of the British 
 Empire are able to realise in a greater or less degree 
 how full and varied that life is. Great Britain has 
 not only secured to men of the Anglo-Saxon race 
 scope for independent development, but has exer- 
 cised a constant and steady influence on the progress 
 of other races as well. The sense of mission, which 
 has come down from Elizabethan times, has braced 
 Great Britain to oppose one military despotism after 
 another, and thus to leave to all the nations of 
 mankind greater freedom for self-development. 
 There is an inspiration in the memory of success,
 
 158 Responsibilities of National Power [CH. 
 
 not merely against Philip II but against Napoleon 
 as well, in which all parts of the British Empire 
 share. There can be no nobler mission for a man 
 of energy and ability than to take his part in dis- 
 charging a public responsibility, and doing his best 
 as an administrator to solve the innumerable 
 problems which arise in all parts of the world ; and 
 the highest testimony is furnished to the success 
 of the British Empire in the respect in which Great 
 Britain is held, even by those who have suffered 
 at times from the blunders of administrators on 
 the spot and the superciliousness of officials at 
 home. Great Britain has not been content to 
 pursue her own self-development apart from her 
 neighbours, but has cherished a sense of mission 
 and developed a sense of responsibility which have 
 won a response. Subject races have recognised the 
 character of her rule, but the possibility of her 
 continuing to exercise this influence depends on 
 the maintenance of her prestige; and her prestige 1 
 must suffer if she shows herself unable to defend 
 her frontiers by land or to maintain her superiority 
 
 1 National glory and national prestige are not to be 
 deprecated as mere gratifications of national vanity; they 
 may be merely this, but they may also be used as effective 
 instruments for rousing a sense of personal duty at home and 
 for enabling the work of government to go on more smoothly 
 in over-sea dominions and dependencies.
 
 vi] The Ties of Kinship 159 
 
 at sea. Admiral Mahan has taught us to realise 
 the importance of sea power in history, and naval 
 superiority is not only necessary to the very existence 
 of the mother country, but essential to the exercise 
 of the British mission and the British responsibility 
 for the countries under her control. 
 
 (v) The Ties of Kinship. 
 
 In the preceding pages an attempt has been 
 made to trace the threads of English ancestry in 
 different aspects of American life, and to show the 
 links of connection with the Old World as precisely 
 and definitely as possible. However much we may 
 feel the historical interest of such affinities we must 
 be on our guard against laying too much stress upon 
 them as factors in national life in the present day. 
 There are large areas on the American continent 
 where there is little consciousness of English 
 ancestry; and, even in those areas where it is 
 highly prized, the sentiment of kinship does not 
 give any immunity against misunderstandings. 
 Quarrels are not unknown in family circles; and 
 the ties of blood relationship between nations are 
 not likely to be of much avail when interests are 
 imperilled or passions roused. 
 
 Indeed in some ways the sentiment of kinship 
 may be a positive danger, if it raises expectations
 
 160 Responsibilities of National Power [CH. 
 
 which are not fulfilled. The traditional friendship 
 between England and Prussia was of long standing ; 
 they had fought side by side at Waterloo, and 
 England had looked sympathetically at the victory 
 of Prussia over Austria in 1866 and admired her 
 development and organisation. In the troublous 
 days of July, 1914, Germans were everywhere 
 confident that the ties of kinship and friendship 
 with England were sufficiently strong to prevent 
 Great Britain from siding against them in their 
 efforts to repel the Slav. There were, indeed, 
 many literary and scientific men in England who 
 felt the ties of moral and intellectual kinship with 
 Germany so strongly that they sympathised with 
 the German expectations, and were prepared to 
 sacrifice our honourable understanding with France, 
 perhaps even our plighted word to Belgium, rather 
 than fail Germany at this critical time 1 . But the 
 nation as a whole felt that Germany expected too 
 much of Great Britain altogether, and that it was 
 necessary to maintain the national honour even 
 at the sacrifice of entering on a costly struggle, for 
 which we were inadequately prepared. The failure 
 on the part of Britain to stand by the ties of kinship 
 has caused bitter disappointment in Germany, and 
 
 1 See the manifesto in the London Daily Chronicle, 3 Aug. 
 1914-
 
 vi] The Ties of Kinship 161 
 
 given rise to intense indignation and in some quarters 
 to virulent hate. 
 
 The English are not very responsive in regard 
 to claims of kindred : there was a general expectation 
 in the North that the British, who had taken such 
 a leading part in the Abolitionist cause, might be 
 counted upon to sympathise with their kinsmen in 
 New England in the struggle with the South. Many 
 sections of the British population did so sympathise ; 
 and Lancashire, in spite of her economic dependence 
 on the South, suffered bitterly and uncomplainingly 
 during the anti-slavery struggle. But British opinion 
 as to the necessity of the war and the merits of the 
 case was so far divided, that the North was bitterly 
 disappointed at the failure of her expectation of 
 moral support. The attitude of Great Britain was 
 perfectly correct, and she paid without demur for 
 the damage done by the Alabama. But many 
 Americans continued to cherish a grievance against 
 Great Britain for her failure to show the expected 
 amount of sympathy, and have not been easily 
 conciliated. The fact of kinship does not necessarily 
 bring about common habits of thought or mutual 
 understanding. The English and American peoples 
 spring from the same stock, but the stems have 
 developed under different conditions of exposure; 
 and the differences are none the less real, because 
 c. ii
 
 162 Responsibilities of National Power [CH. 
 
 each branch is hardly conscious of them. Much 
 has been said in the present war about the German 
 misunderstanding of the solidarity of the British 
 Empire and the loyalty of the native races; there 
 is no region 1 where the Germans were regarded as 
 deliverers who were breaking the bands of the 
 British yoke and enabling the oppressed to go free. 
 But it may be remembered that similar miscalcula- 
 tions were made a century ago, and that the Ameri- 
 cans entirely underrated the strength of the sentiment 
 of loyalty when they invaded Canada in i8i2 2 . 
 
 Racial affinities are of comparatively little import- 
 ance in determining the policy of a country in modern 
 times; far more depends on the actual experience 
 which a people have in common. Since 1776 the 
 experience of America, and of Great Britain, has 
 been very different, and they have drifted farther 
 apart ; but there are some signs that America may 
 enter on new political experiences as she develops, 
 and that she may be prepared to interpret the 
 policy of Great Britain more favourably. It is 
 becoming less and less possible for the United States 
 to maintain an attitude of isolation, and to hold 
 
 1 The rebellion at the Gape was so short lived that it 
 need hardly be noted as an exception. 
 
 2 A. G. Bradley, The Hundred Years' Peace Celebrations, 
 in the Nat. Rev. Aug. 1914 (No. 378), p. 934.
 
 vi] The Ties of Kinship 163 
 
 aloof from other countries, and live her own life 
 for herself alone. Her commerce brings her into 
 contact with the most distant peoples : it is necessary 
 to enter into definite arrangements with them and 
 especially to lay down lines beyond which she is 
 unwilling that they should encroach; and she has 
 been forced to enter into closer relations with 
 certain districts which are not contiguous with her 
 territory, both in the Philippines, Cuba, and Panama ; 
 she has been forced to organise government of a 
 type which is not in accordance with her cherished 
 institutions, and more recently to assume a sort of 
 patronage over the Republic of Hayti. The expan- 
 sion of the sphere of influence beyond the American 
 continent gives her a new claim for the recognition 
 of her greatness by other nations. But the greatness 
 of a country does not depend so much on the extent 
 of her territory and the development of her resources 
 as on national character, and other people judge of 
 the character of a nation by her conduct. The 
 really great nation is one that loses no opportunity of 
 using her power within and her influence on other 
 nations for the good of mankind. 
 
 It is the temptation of a democracy to refuse to 
 recognise any responsibility for the manner in which 
 power and influence are used, but private interests
 
 164 Responsibilities of National Power [CH. vi 
 
 have no right to run riot in "God's own country." 
 Mr Roosevelt and his supporters have thrown 
 themselves heartily into the task of exercising 
 authority over half civilised and backward peoples, 
 instead of leaving them to work out their own 
 salvation for themselves, and have thus shown that 
 they believe it is the duty of America to use her 
 power for the good of the people subjected to her 
 rule. No nation can justify a claim to leadership in 
 promoting the cause of humanity which is content to 
 look on at the troubles of a neighbour as if they did 
 not concern her. Time will show whether Dr Wilson 
 has correctly gauged the temper of the American 
 people, or whether they are ready to rise to the 
 responsibility of using effectively the power they 
 possess as a nation.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Aberdeen 82 
 
 Acley 17 
 
 Adam, William 65 
 
 Airds House, Appin 65 
 
 Alabama claims 148, 161 
 
 Alexander the Great 40 
 
 Alexandria 40 
 
 Alfred, King 135 
 
 Anglo-Saxons 4 ff. 
 
 Annapolis 50, 64, 90 
 
 Antioch 40 
 
 Anti-slavery Movement 
 
 125 n. 
 Ardoch 30 
 Armada, Spanish 137 
 
 Bacon, Roger 92 
 
 Baltimore, Ireland 136 
 
 Banbury 42 n. I 
 
 Baptists 6 1, 86 
 
 Barnard Castle 55 n. 2 
 
 Bath 53 n. 2 
 
 Bedford Bridge 54 
 
 Berwick upon Tweed 41, 59 
 
 Birrens 30 
 
 Black Death 93, 97 
 
 Black Prince, the 70 n. 3 
 
 Blair, Hugh 77 
 
 Bombay 46 
 
 Book of Common Prayer 152 
 
 Borders, the, of England and 
 Scotland 16 
 
 Boston, Lincolnshire 42 n. 2 
 
 Boston, Mass. 33, 37, 43, 
 64, 68 ff. ; Ancient and 
 Honourable Artillery Com- 
 pany of 72 f. ; library 
 connected with King's 
 Chapel at 90 ; State House 
 at 57 
 
 Bray, Dr Thomas 89 
 Bridgnorth 53 n. 2 
 Broadway, Worcestershire 44 
 Browne, Dr Edward 49 
 Brown University, Rhode 
 
 Island 84 
 
 Bruce, Sir William 65 
 Bryan, W. T. 151 
 Bunyan, John 54 
 Burial of the dead 6 ff. ; in 
 the Middle Ages 7; Puri- 
 tans and the 8 
 Burke, Edmund 152 
 Burwell, Lines 55 n. 2 
 Bury St Edmunds 32, 42 
 
 Cambridge, Eng. 42, 60 f. 
 Cambridge, Mass. 70, 74 
 Cambridgeshire 6 
 Canada 12 n. I, 14, 135, 138, 
 
 148 
 
 Carcassonne 40 
 Carlisle 32, 55 
 Carstares, William 80, 82, 
 
 85 n. 2 
 
 Castle Howard 64 f . 
 Cecil, William 100 
 Chapman, J. J. 127 
 Charleroi 50 
 
 Charles I 45, 58, 104, 136, 150 
 Charles II 45, 64, 134 
 Charlestown 90 n. 
 Chatham, Lord 70 
 Cheddar 55 
 Chester 30 
 Chesterton 15 
 Chichester 55 
 Churches, parish 22, 58, 60; 
 
 old New England 59 ff. 
 Churchwardens 25 ff.
 
 i66 
 
 Index, 
 
 Claremont 64 n. 2 
 
 Common Fields, Pasturage, 
 and Waste n, 16, 93, 105! 
 
 Commoners 18, 20 f. 
 
 Communal management of 
 village land 10 ff. ; sub- 
 stitution of individual for 
 19 ff. 
 
 Compton, Bp 89 
 
 Connecticut 86 
 
 Constable, parish 23 f., 25 
 
 Constantinople 39 
 
 Corn 1 02, 115; Bounty Act 
 104 
 
 Cornwallis, Lord 153 
 
 Cottenham 18, 21 
 
 Coventry 44 n. 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver 45, 59, 145 
 
 Crown, loyalty to the 100 ff. ; 
 103 
 
 Crusades, the 34, 38 
 
 Cunningham, Alexander 82 
 
 Declaration of Independence 
 
 109 f., 138, 145 
 Derry 58 
 Dome, the, in architecture 
 
 63 ff. 
 
 Drapery, manufacture of 114 
 Dunlop, William 85 
 Dunster 55 n. 2 
 Dykes, British 6 
 
 East India Company 69 ff., 
 
 103, 108, 129 
 Edinburgh 42 n. 2, 43, 77, 
 
 82 ; academic life in 78 f . 
 Edward I 40 f., 62 
 Edward the Elder 32 
 Elizabeth, Queen 3, 60, 97, 
 
 104, 134; achievements of 
 her reign 99 ff. 
 
 Emmanuel College, Cam- 
 bridge 73 ff. 
 
 England and America, early 
 parallels and contrasts in 
 settlement 2 ff., 24, 28 ff., 
 32 ff. 
 
 Episcopalians 87 
 
 Evangelical Revival 152 
 Evelyn, Sir John 47 
 
 Faneuil Hall, Boston 37 
 Fiske, John 13 
 Fitzherbert, J. 19 
 Flag, American 66 ff. 
 Flanders 136 
 Florence 62 n. 
 Forestallers 36 
 Fortification 39 
 Franklin, Dr 69 
 Fuller, Thomas 73 
 
 Gascony 40, 136 
 Genoa 38 
 George II 109 
 Germany 146, 150, 160 
 Glasgow 77, 82 
 Glastonbury 32 
 Grantham 42 n. i 
 Great Boothby 61 
 Greenwich 64 
 Gregory, David 76 
 Gregory the Great 9 
 
 Hadrian's Wall 30 
 Harrison, Mr 69 
 Harvard College 73 ff. 
 Harvard, John 73 f. 
 Hastings, Warren 153 
 Hayti 163 
 Henry VII 134 
 Henry VIII 74 
 Hippodamus of Miletus 40 
 Hitchin 1 1 
 Holland 80, 83 
 Honourable Artillery Com- 
 pany 73 
 
 Hospitals 109, 131 
 Hudson Bay Company 103 
 
 Illinois 60 n. 2 
 
 Independents 86 
 
 India 137!, 151, 153, 156; 
 
 Civil Service of 153 
 Ipswich 54 n., 56 n. 4 
 
 James I 45
 
 Index 
 
 167 
 
 James VI 77 
 Jefferson, Thomas 131 
 John Carter Brown Library, 
 
 Providence, R.I. 67 n. 3 
 Jones, Inigo 53 n. 2, 62 
 
 Kames, Lord 79 
 Kendal 15 
 
 Ker, Robert, mason 65 
 Kinross House 65 
 
 Laissez faire 121 f. 
 
 Lancashire 161 
 
 Laud, Archbp 58, 150 
 
 Ledbury 55 n. 3 
 
 Levant, the 39 
 
 Leyden 82 f. 
 
 Libel of English Policy 136 
 
 Libraries, public 88 ff. 
 
 Lincoln 6, 30 
 
 Little St Mary's Church, 
 
 Cambridge 66 
 Locke, John 130 
 London 6, 29, 31, 58; Fire 
 
 of 44 fit., 59 
 Longleat 63 
 Lorkin, Dr 60 
 Louisiana 14 
 Low Countries 43 n. 
 Ludlow, Shropshire 35 n. 
 Lynch, Mr 69 
 
 Machinery, introduction of 
 
 Ii6f. 
 
 Mahan, Admiral 159 
 Maiden, Mass. 12 n. i, 57 n. 
 Manor, the 15 
 Manorial system 13 f., 92 
 Mansions 62 ff. 
 Market cross 35, 54 ff., 57 
 Market-place 33 ff., 54. 57 
 Maryland 87, 89 f. 
 Massachusetts 8, 86 
 Mather, Cotton 75 
 Meadow land 17 
 Meeting houses 8, 58 ff. 
 Mildenhall, Suffolk 55 
 Mildmay, Sir Walter 73 
 Mohawks, the 70 
 
 Monasteries, Benedictine 9, 31 
 Montpazier 40 f., 48 
 Mount Vernon, Virginia 66 
 Much Wenlock 15, 52 ff. 
 
 Naval superiority, England 
 
 and 135 ff. 
 
 New Haven, Connecticut 75 
 New York 14, 29, 33, 43, 46 
 Normandy 39 
 North, Lord 69 
 North Walsham 55 n. i 
 Norwich 32 f., 42 
 
 Ohio valley 14, 135 
 Order-makers 21 
 Ortel, Herr 146 n. 2 
 Orvieto 53 n. 3 
 Osbourne, B. 56 n. 4 
 
 Palma Nuovo 49 
 
 Parish, the 15, 22 f. 
 
 Peasants' Revolt of 1381 96 
 
 Peel, Sir Robert 118 
 
 Penn, William 48, i26n. 
 
 Pennsylvania 12 n. i, 87, 
 1260. 
 
 Peterborough 32, 42 
 
 Philadelphia 43, 48 
 
 Pilgrim Fathers, the I ff., 
 86, 104 
 
 Piracy 136 
 
 Poor Law 16 
 
 Poore, Bp 41 
 
 Portsmouth, New Hamp- 
 shire 7 
 
 Preaching 59 
 
 Presbyterianism 87 
 
 Princeton 76, 83 ff. 
 
 Providence, R.I. 61, 67 n. 3 
 
 Puritanism 7 
 
 Pythagoras School, Cam- 
 bridge 6 1 
 
 Quakers, the 87, 125 n. , 
 
 Quebec 142 
 
 Quincey market, Boston 37 
 
 Rattle-snake 68 n.
 
 i68 
 
 Index 
 
 Regrator 36 
 Reid, Thomas 77 
 Rhode Island 86 
 Ridgely.CaptainCharles 6411.3 
 Ridgely House, Hampton, 
 
 Maryland 64 
 Roads, Roman 5 f . 
 Rollin, Governor 8 n. 2 
 Rolls of Parliament 15 
 Roman Catholics 87 
 Rome 9; Piazza del Popolo 
 
 at 49 
 
 Roosevelt, Theodore 164 
 Ross, Mrs, upholsterer 67 
 Rothwell 56 n. 4 
 Royal Humane Society 109 
 Royal Society 46 
 
 St Andrews 41, 82 
 
 St Paul's Cathedral 58, 63 
 
 S. Sophia 63 
 
 Salisbury 41, 55 
 
 Scotsmen, influence on 
 American institutions 86 ft. 
 
 Seven Years' War 145 
 
 Shaftesbury, Lord 131 
 
 Shepperton, Virginia 57 n. 
 
 Shepton Mallet 55 
 
 Ship-money 136 
 
 Shrewsbury 56 f. 
 
 Sibbald, Sir Robert 81 
 
 Sinclair, Sir John 144 
 
 Smith, Adam 79 
 
 South Carolina 90 
 
 Spencer, Herbert 122 
 
 State, theories of the 122 ff. 
 
 Streets in America 29 ; radi- 
 ating 48 ff. 
 
 Stretham 21 
 
 Sulgrave Church, Northamp- 
 ton 66 n. 
 
 Surveyors 23 
 
 Tennant, Dr 85 
 Totnes, Devon 54 
 Township, the 14 ff., 21 ; as 
 the civil parish 22 
 
 Trade Unionists ngf. 
 Trafalgar 138, 142 
 Tresham, Sir T. 56 n. 4 
 Tucker, Dr 144 
 
 Union Jack 71 
 Union of England and Scot- 
 land 1 6, 150 f. 
 
 Vanbrugh, Sir John 64 
 
 Venice 38 
 
 Vestries, Easter 22, 26; 
 
 Select 23 
 Village, English, in the Middle 
 
 Ages 10 f., 25 
 Virginia 14, 96, 128, 150; 
 
 University of 64 
 Vitruvius Britannicus 63 
 
 Wakefield 56 
 Wales, Borders of 39 
 Wallsend 17 
 Walpole, Sir R. 134 
 Ware, I. 65 
 Washington 29, 50, 64 
 Washington, General 66 ff., 
 
 71, 129 
 
 Washington, Godfrey 66 n. 
 Waterbeach 21 
 Whitefield, George 8 n. i 
 Whittlesea, Cambs 18 
 William and Mary 64 
 Williamsburg 64 n. 2 
 Wilson, Woodrow 140, 164 
 Winchelsea 41, 62 
 Witherfield 12 n. I 
 Witherspoon, Dr 85 
 Wolsey, Cardinal 134 
 Wren, Sir Christopher 46 ff. ; 
 
 59, 62 f., 64 n. 2 
 Wymondham, Norfolk 55 
 
 Yale, Eli 75 
 
 Yarmouth, Norfolk 42, 54 
 
 York 6, 29, 31, 44 n.
 
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