Part 106

Canada's wonderful growth in population and wealth is but one example. Australia began its career (1837) as a penal colony with a few shiploads of convicts; now it is a prosperous, powerful, and loyal patr of the Empire (S545). Later than the middle of the nineteenth century, New Zealand was a mission field where cannibalism still existed (1857); now it is one of the leaders in English civilization.

Again, when Victoria came to the throne (1837) the greater part of Africa was simply a geographical expression; the coast had been explored, but scarcely anything was known of the country back of it. Through the efforts of Livingstone and those who followed him (1840- 1890), the interior was explored and the source of the Nile was discovered (1863). Stanley undertook the great work on the Congo River and the "dark continent" ceased to be dark. Trade was opened with the interior, and the discovery of diamond mines and gold mines in South Africa (1867, 1884) stimulated emigration. Railways have been pushed forward in many directions (S622), new markets are springing up, and Africa, once the puzzle of the world, seems destined to become one of the great fields which the Anglo-Saxon race is determined to control, if not to possess.

On the other hand, the British West Indies have of late years greatly declined from their former prosperity. The English demand for cheap sugar has encouraged the importation of beet-root sugar from Germany and France. This has reduced the market for cane sugar to so low a point that there has been but little, if any, profit in raising it in the West Indies; but fruit is a success.

See Brooks Adams's "America's Economic Supremacy."

619. England's Change of Feeling toward her Colonies.

One of the most striking features of the "Diamond Jubilee" celebration (S607) was the prominence given to the Colonial Prime Ministers. There was a time, indeed, when the men who governed England regarded Canada and Australia as "a source of weakness," and the Colonial Office in London knew so little of the latter country that it made ridiculous blunders in attempting to address official despatches to Melbourne, Australia. Even as late as the middle of the last century Disraeli, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote to Lord Malmesbury in regard to the Newfoundland fisheries, "These wretched colonies will all be independent, too, in a few years, and are a millstone around our necks."

See Traill's "Social England," VI, 684.

Twenty years afterwards Disraeli, later Lord Beaconsfield, declared that one of the great objects he and his party had in view was to uphold the British Empire and to do everything to maintain its unity. That feeling has steadily gained in power and was never stronger than it is to-day. Canada, Australia, and the other governing colonies (S625) have since responded by actions as well as words, and "Imperial Federation" has become something more than a high-sounding phrase (SS625, 626).

620. The Condition of Ireland; International Arbitration.

But to make such federation harmonious and complete, the support of Ireland must be obtained. That country is the only member of the United Kingdom whose representatives in Parliament refused, as a rule, to take part in the celebration of the Queen's reign. They felt that their island had never been placed on a true equality with its stronger and more prosperous neighbor. In fact, the Royal Commission, appointed to inquire into the relative taxation of England and Ireland, reported (1897) nearly unanimously that "for a great many years Ireland had paid annually more than 2,000,000 pounds beyond her just proportion of taxation." It has been estimated that the total excess obtained during the Queen's reign amounted to nearly 100,000,000 pounds.

McCarthy's "History of Our Own Times," V, 487.

Mr. Gladstone, the Liberal Prime Minister (1893) made a vigorous effort to secure "Home Rule" for Ireland. His bill granting that country an independent Parliament passed the House of Commons by a very large majority, but was utterly defeated in the House of Lords. Five years later (1898) Lord Salisbury, the Conservative Prime Minister, passed a bill which, though it did not give Ireland "Home Rule," did give it local self-government on the same popular foundation on which it rests in England (S608) and Scotland. Mr. Bryce, the British Ambassador at Washington, recently said (1911) that he was convinced that the condition of the people of Ireland had greatly improved and was "still advancing," and that "before long nearly all the land wouyld belong to the cultivators" (S605).

The recognition of the principle of international arbitration by England in the Alabama case (S598), in the Bering Sea Seal Fisheries dispute (1893), in the Venezuela boundary controversy (1896), and in the Newfoundland Fisheries case (1910) proved that the English people saw that the victories of peace are worth as much to a nation as the victories of war. The Hague Peace Conference Treaty, ratified by Great Britain with the United States and the leading nations of Europe and the Far East (1899), provided for the establishment of a permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague between all of the great powers which signed it. All appeals to it, however, are entirely voluntary.

Ten years earlier, a proposition to establish such a court for the purpose of strengthening the cause of international peace would have been looked upon as "a splendid but delusive dream." To-day many of the ablest men on both sides of the Atlantic believe that the time is not far off when England and America will agree to settle by arbitration all questions which diplomacy cannot deal with, which may arise between them. Sir Edward Grey, Secretary for Foreign Affairs in Mr. Asquith's Liberal Cabinet, fears that the continued expenditure on larger and larger armaments "will end in international revolution." On the other hand, those who are constantly advocating the building of more and bigger battleships admit that the Peace Party presents strong arguments in support of its views, and that "the war against war" is making progress.

621. Death of Gladstone; the Cabot Tower; Centennial of the First Savings Bank, 1899.

Meanwhile, Mr. Gladstone, the great Liberal leader, died, full of years and honors, at his residence, Hawarden Castle, in North Wales (1898). The "Grand Old Man"--as his friends delighted to call him-- was buried in that Abbey at Westminster which holds so much of England's most precious dust. His grave is not far from the memorial to Lord Beaconsfield, the eminent Conservative leader, who was his lifelong rival and political opponent.

In the autumn (1898) the Cabot monument was opened at Bristol. It is a commanding tower, overlooking the ancient city and port from which John Cabot (S335) sailed in the spring of 1497. The monument commemorates that explorer's discovery of the mainland of the New World. An inscription on the face of the tower expresses "the earnest hope that Peace and Friendship may ever continue between the kindred peoples" of England and America.

In May of the next year, 1899, the one hundredth anniversary of the establishment of savings banks in Great Britain was celebrated. Near the closing year of the eighteenth century, 1799, Reverend Joseph Smith, Vicar of Wendover in Buckinghamshire, invited the laborers of his parish to deposit their savings with him on interest. "Upon the first day of the week," said he, quoting St. Paul's injuction, "let every one of you lay by him in store." He offered to receive sums as small as twopence. Before the end of the year he had sixty depositors. Eventually the government took up the scheme and established the present system of national postal savings banks.

The quotation is from I Corinthians xvi, 2.

They have done and are doing incalculable good. At present there are over eleven million depositors in the United Kingdom. Most of them belong to the wage-earning class, and they hold more than 212,000,000 pounds. In this case certainly the grain of mustard seed, sown a few generations ago, has produced a mighty harvest.

622. England in Egypt; Progress in Africa.

While busy at home, the English had been busy outside of their island. Five years after the opening of the Suez Canal (1869), Lord Beaconsfield, then the Conservative Prime Minister, bought nearly half of the canal property from the Governor of Egypt. Since then England has kept her hand on the country of the Pharaohs and the pyramids, and kept it there greatly to the advantage of the laboring class.

About ten years later (1881), Arabi Pasha, an ambitious colonel in the native army, raised the cry, "Down with all foreigners--Egypt for the Egyptians!" Lord Wolseley defeated Arabi's forces, and the colonel was banished from the country.

Two years afterwards (1883) a still more formidable rebellion broke out in the Sudan,--a province held by Egypt. (See map facing p. 428.) The leader of the insurrection styled himself the Mahdi, or great Mohammedan Prophet. Then (1884) Gladstone sent General Gordon to withdraw the Egyptian troops from Khartoum, the capital of the Sudan. The Mahdi's forces shut up the heroic soldier in that city, and before help could reach him, he and all his Egyptian troops were massacred. No braver or truer man ever died at the post of duty, for in him was fulfilled Wordsworth's eloquent tribute to the "Happy Warrior."

See Wordsworth's poems "The Happy Warrior."

Many years later, Lord Kitchener advanced against the new Mahdi, and at Omdurman his terrible machine guns scattered the fanatical Dervishes, or Mohammedan monks, like chaff before the whirlwind. The next autumn (1899) the British overtook the fugitive leader of the Dervishes and annihilated his army.

Since then British enterprise, British capital, and American inventive skill have transformed Egypt. The completion of the great dam across the Nile, at Assouan (1902), regulates the water supply for lower Egypt. The creation of this enormous reservoir promises to make the Nile valley one of the richest cotton-producing regions in the world.

The "Cape to Cairo" railway, which is more than half finished, is another British undertaking of immense importance. (See map opposite.) When ready for traffic, through its whole length of nearly six thousand miles, besides its branch lines, it will open all Eastern Africa, from the Cape of Good Hope to the Mediterranean, to the spread of commerce and civilization.