AS OTHERS SEE US. AT a moment when there is about to be determined an issue in our national career graver than any known in the lifetime of the oldest among us, it can only do good to pause and take stock of ourselves as we appear to an impartial observer, a man of another nation. 1 'England and the English from an American Point of View' was published early in the present year, before the great upheaval was upon us. There is evidence in the book that its author has lived much in England, and has studied our social conditions from many points of view. He acknowledges that he is deeply in debt to the English for many delightful friendships, for generous and unstinted hospitality, and for teaching him much. He repeatedly says that he is not criticising, but only offering his impressions and trying to explain the facts he has observed. But none the less he hits hard and does not mince his language, whether he is speaking of the dress of English ladies, of the food of British people, of the streets of London after dusk, of the compromise of a Cathedral preacher, or of a Cabinet Minister. Who, he asks, are these English? When Cæsar and his legions came to Britain fifty-five years before the birth of Christ, they found our island inhabited by an Iberian race from South-Western Europe, of whom the Basque is to-day the best and last representative. The Romans occupied the land for more than 450 years, and then retired to the continent of Europe, leaving traces of their occupation in roads and fortified camps, and little else. The Britons re mained; neither their language nor their laws nor their customs had been changed by the Romans. But now from NorthWestern Germany began another invasion. Jutes came for adventure and for booty; Saxons, because their own country was overcrowded and they wanted land to settle on. These Saxons were an agricultural people of the peasant class; they gradually pushed their way over the land, thrusting back the Britons into Wales and across the water into Brittany; they were troubled by Angles and by Danes, who landed and settled on the East Coast, where alone the Danes have left an appreciable mark, but elsewhere they held their own. They were independent farmers, they admitted a leader, and came to his aid at times of their own choosing. When they had 1 England and the English from an American Point of View. By Price Collier. Printed by the Scribner Press, New York, U.S.A. Duckworth & Co., London. 1909. public meetings to discuss important affairs, they gradually grew more and more into the habit of leaving these matters to those who had leisure and brains. Out of this habit grew the Witenagemot, or Meeting of Wise Men. They appointed men of wealth and leisure to mete out justice. They were a law-abiding people, with a rooted distaste for over-much government. They wanted independence, they wanted not to be meddled with, but, as Tacitus wrote, they were always ready to a man to take up arms. Then came the Normans; but just as had been the case with the Angles and the Danes, the Saxons in time swallowed them up, and Saxon customs, Saxon laws, and Saxon institutions prevailed in the long-run. These Saxons would have none of Feudalism, and the result was Magna Charta; for if it was the Norbarons who shook off personal rule by the king, it was the Saxon spirit imbued in them which prevailed, and it was the Saxon people who obtained freedom. It is from Magna Charta that the House of Lords dates its existence. This is what our American writer says:— man "The present House of Lords itself is the direct result of the Saxon's unwillingness to bother with government, and his willingness to leave such matters to those of most leisure and most wealth, and therefore, in all probability, to those of most capacity and most experi ence in such matters. It was, and is, the common-sense view of government, as over against the theoretical view." These, then, are the English, a people originally agricul tural, industrious, lovers of freedom, above all not wanting to be bothered with governing, but choosing their ablest, their wealthiest, their most leisured men to govern for them. "They are Saxons, who love the land, who love their liberty, and whose sole claim to genius is their common-sense.' Years have rolled on,-has the Saxon race retained its characteristics? In the chapter chapter headed "First Impressions" the earliest impression is that of "just slow-moving, unchanging, confident bulk." Dealing with the question of our food, our American says: "What you want is not refused you, but what they have and like is gradually forced upon you. Thus they govern their colonies." English servants are "fixed, immovable, unconcerned about other careers, undisturbed by hazy ambitions, and insistent upon their privileges, as are all other Englishmen. They hold themselves at a high value, assert that value, and wherever and whenever possible, take all they can get. This is the British way, an impressive and an eminently successful way." And he says they may laugh at all the turmoil of trades unions, for without union the wages of servants have increased out are on a scale that can only be called mean"; but he says, "This England has become the great Empire she is, because she is a man's country, and the expenditure permitted to the women is only one of the minor results of this." their rewards early and often. As a consequence, England has had for hundreds of years an honourroll of mighty men at the helm of her affairs. "England has never had a social upheaval which has driven out her old families, and in consequence the public service commands an ability, and on the whole is conducted with an integrity, due to the fine feeling of a class long trained in genuine patriotism such as no other country can boast of." or Our author finds the English- "England is not only a man's country, but the English man is pre-eminently a man's man. The prizes here go to the soldiers, the sailors, the statesmen, the colonisers, the winners of new territory and the rulers over them, the travellers and explorers, the great churchmen and successful schoolmasters, to those in short with masculine minds and bodies. The feminine, the effeminate, and the Semitic prowess is rewarded, it is true-more of late years than ever beforebut it is not the ideal of England, in our author's the nation. It has been opinion, is a land, and Engwittily said that a states- lishmen the people, of comman is a dead politician; promise, which "some people but in England this does call hypocrisy, some pharisanot apply. The great ism." The chapter headed statesmen or the leading "The Land of Compromise" is politicians, as one may well worth study. Our naplease to call them, receive tional expenditure on drink, sport, and war is contrasted with the ideals of our State Church; the squabbles of our Government over religious education at home, and its profound horror of Chinese slavery in South Africa and of oppression on the Congo, with "pandering to priestcraft" in Ireland, and "peddling opium in China against the wish of the Chinese." Our author is immensely struck with the work done by "The Great Unpaid,"-a name which, he says, is truthful rather than humorous. He points out that "the country Towns, Boroughs, and Districts, and Parishes, and all the machinery of their government, are entirely managed by the voluntary labours of those with the wealth, leisure, and ability to do So. They sit as Magistrates, they govern the town as Councillors and Aldermen, they look after the roads, sanitation, watersupply, lighting, schools, poor-houses, and are expected by the powers that be in Parliament to put into and keep in working order educational and licensing enactments; and recently the whole reorganisation of the territorial forces, or new Army Bill, and the putting into effect of the Small Holdings Act, are to be largely entrusted to them for their successful operation. That they undertake all these duties, that they do them so well, and with so little -almost no-friction, and with so little dissatisfaction to those whom they thus govern, is," he is inclined to think, "the most impressive feature of English life." As to the conditions under which England waxed and grew great, he points out how we have changed from our former habits and ideas. We were an agricultural people above all things else,-love of the land was deep rooted. In 1901, 77 per cent of the population had become urban, and only 23 per cent remained rural. Yet he shows clearly that the accumulation of land in comparatively few hands, since the days of Elizabeth when land was plentiful, is but the natural consequence of investment by the abler men who make fortunes, and that many of England's largest landowners to-day are people of this type. new Individualism, self-dependence, was the characteristic of our people. Our American shows how one party at least in the State is coquetting openly with Socialism. After stating that, roughly speaking, one person out of every seventy is now in receipt of an old-age pension, he says, "Is human nature a different thing in this island? Will men save here who are being saved for? Will men work here when others must work for them? On the contrary, less here than in almost any other country. They are slow, stolid, cold-blooded, and selfish. A fight, or drink, or sport, these rouse them, but little else does.... The British workman's savings bank deposits are only some 265 million dollars. ... It would take three times this amount to pay his drink bill for one year. But nobody dares take his cup away from him. Instead of that it is proposed to promise him support in his old age, so that he need not save at the public - house in the meanwhile. "This matter of old-age pensions is an insidiously elastic form of outdoor relief, which will be stretched to suit the political exigencies of the hour, and a very enticing invitation to shiftlessness, to trust in God and let the powder get damp. It is the beginning of the change of English attitude from frank and free individualism to the fashionable present day effeminacy of State support." "We have seen," he says, "how neither opportunity nor responsibility has been denied to any man. Any man may rise in church, in State, or society. So much has ample freedom done. Men made England, and kept her inviolate. But now what a change! At the hour of this writing practically every important legislative movement is in some sort a plea and a plan to soften men, to lessen their responsibilities, and to make them feel that they need not earn their opportunities. This may do in some Utopian kingdom of which I know nothing, but it is death to of of our its constituent parts. "When one remembers that there is no written constitution here, no infallible or inviolable body of law, but that each emergency is met by common sense and solved by the application of a kind of working worldly wisdom, one admires the more the calm way in which each, from the highest to the lowest, submits, is satisfied, and goes his way." Of the King he says, "He is the cheapest investment and the most valuable asset England has to-day. Whenever he has taken a part in national affairs it has been for the glory, the peace, and prosperity of his country. When he meddles it is not to advertise himself, not for the humiliation and undoing of his country, but for her honour. . The King is the people plus the experience, the knowledge, the impartial situation, and unprejudiced mind, which the people |