GREAT ENGLISH INFLUENCE ON FRANCE. In 1715 the English language was almost unspoken in France, English science and political progress were unknown there, and the English were looked down upon and hated. Half a century later English was spoken everywhere by the scholars of the time; the English were looked upon as the political and scientific leaders of Europe; and the scholars of France visited England to study English political, economic, and scientific progress. Locke, an uncompromising advocate of political and religious liberty; Hobbes, the speculative moral philosopher; and the great scientist Newton were the teachers of Voltaire.
More than any other single man, Voltaire moulded and redirected eighteenth-century thought in France. [16] Numerous French writers of importance--Helvetius, Diderot, Morellet, Voltaire, Rousseau, to mention but a few--drew their inspiration from English writers. In the eighteenth century England became the school for political liberty for France. [17]
The effect of the work of Isaac Newton (p. 388), as popularized by the writings of Voltaire, was revolutionary on a people who had been so tyrannized over by the clergy as had the French during the reign of Louis XIV. An interest in scientific studies before unknown in France now flamed up, and a new generation of French scientists arose. Physics, chemistry, zoology, and anatomy received a great new impetus, while botany, geology, and mineralogy were raised to the rank of sciences. Popular scientific lectures became very common. The cla.s.sics were almost abandoned for the new studies.
Economic questions now also began to be discussed, such as questions of money, food, finance, and government expenditure. In 1776 the Englishman, Adam Smith, laid the foundations of the new science of political economy by the publication of his _Wealth of Nations_, and this was at once translated into French and eagerly read. In 1781 a French banker by the name of Necker published his _Compte Rendu_, a statistical report on the finances of France. So feverishly eager were men to study problems of government that six thousand copies were sold the day it was published, and eighty thousand had to be printed before the demand for it was satisfied. A half-century earlier it would have been read scarcely at all.
In the meantime taxes piled up, reforms were refused, the power and arrogance of the clergy and n.o.bility showed no signs of diminution, the nation was burdened with debt, commerce and agriculture declined, the lot of the common people became ever more hard to bear, and the ma.s.ses grew increasingly resentful and rebellious. As national affairs continued to drift from bad to worse in France, a series of important happenings on the American continent helped to bring matters more rapidly to a crisis.
Before describing these events, however, we wish to sketch briefly the rise of government by the people and the extension of liberalism in England--the first great democratic nation of the western world.
III. ENGLAND THE FIRST DEMOCRATIC NATION
EARLY BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH LIBERTY. The first western nation created from the wreck of the Roman Empire to achieve a measurement of self-government was England. Better civilized than most of the other wandering tribes, at the time of their coming to English sh.o.r.es, the invading Angles, Saxons, and Jutes early accepted Christianity (p. 120) and settled down to an agricultural life. On English sh.o.r.es they soon built up a for-the-time substantial civilization. This was later largely destroyed by the pillaging Danes, but with characteristic energy the English set to work to a.s.similate the newcomers and build up civilization anew. The work of Alfred (p. 146) in reestablishing law and order, at a time when law and order scarcely existed anywhere in western Europe, will long remain famous. Later on, and at a time when German and Hun and Slav had only recently accepted Christianity in name and had begun to settle down into rude tribal governments, and when the Prussians in their original home along the eastern Baltic were still offering human sacrifices to their heathen G.o.ds (p. 120), the English barons were extorting _Magna Charta_ from King John and laying the firm foundations of English const.i.tutional liberty. In the meadow at Runnymede, on that justly celebrated June day, in 1215, government under law and based on the consent of the governed began to shape itself once more in the western world. Of the sixty-three articles of this Charter of Liberties, three possess imperishable value.
These provided:
1. That no free man shall be imprisoned or proceeded against except by his peers, or the law of the land, which secured trial by jury.
2. That justice should neither be sold, denied, nor delayed.
3. That dues from the people to the king could be imposed only with the consent of the National Council (after 1246 known as Parliament).
So important was this charter to such a liberty-loving people as the English have always been, and so bitterly did kings resent its hampering provisions, that within the next two centuries kings had been forced to confirm it no less than thirty-seven times.
By 1295 the first complete Parliament, representative of the three orders of society--Lords, Clergy, and Commons--a.s.sembled, and in 1333 the Commons gained the right to sit by itself. From that time to the present the Commons, representing the people, has gradually broadened its powers, working, as Tennyson has said, [18] "from precedent to precedent," until to-day it rules the English nation. In 1376 the Commons gained the right to impeach the King"s ministers, and in 1407 the exclusive right to make grants of money for any governmental purpose. Centuries ahead of other nations, this insured an almost continual meeting of the national a.s.sembly and a close scrutiny of the acts of both kings and ministers.
In 1604 King James I, imitating continental European precedents, proclaimed his theory as to the "divine right of kings" to rule, [19] and a struggle at once set in which carried the English into Civil War (1642- 49); led to the beheading of Charles I (1649); the overthrow and banishment of James II (1688); and the ultimate firm establishment, instead, of the "divine right of the common people." [20] In an age when the autocratic power and the divine right of kings to rule was almost unquestioned elsewhere in Europe, the English people compelled their king to recognize that he could rule over them only when he ruled in their interests and as they wished him to do. Though there was a period of struggle later on with the German Georges (I, II, and III), and especially with the honest but stupid George III, England has, since 1688, been a government of and by the people. [21] France did not rid itself of the "divine-right" conception until the French Revolution (1789), and Germany, Austria, and Russia not until 1918.
GROWTH OF TOLERANCE AMONG THE ENGLISH. The results of the long struggle of the English for liberty under law showed itself in many ways in the growth of tolerance among the people of the English nation. At a time when other nations were bound down in blind obedience to king and priest, and when dissenting minorities were driven from the land, the English people had become accustomed to the idea of individual liberty, regulated by law, and to the toleration of opinions with which they did not agree. These characteristically English conceptions of liberty under law and of the toleration of minorities have found expression in many important ways in the life and government of the people (R. 250), and have been elements of great strength in England"s colonial policy. One of the important ways in which this growth of tolerance among the English showed itself was in the extension of a larger freedom to those unable to subscribe to the state religion.
Though the Reformation movement had stirred up bitter hatreds in England, as on the Continent, the English were among the first of European peoples to show tolerance of opposition in religious matters. The high English State Church, which had succeeded the Roman, had made but small appeal to many Englishmen. The Puritans had early struggled to secure a simplification of the church service and the introduction of more preaching (p. 359), and in the seventeenth century the organization of three additional dissenting sects, which became known as Unitarians, Baptists, and Quakers, took place. These sects divided off rather quietly, and their separation resulted only in the enactment of new laws regarding conformity, prayers, and teaching.
During the latter half of the seventeenth century, after the execution of Charles I (1649), the Puritans had temporarily risen to power, and during their control of affairs had imposed their strict Calvinistic standards as to Sabbath observance and piety on the nation. This was very distasteful to many, and from such strict observances the people in time rebelled. The standards of the English in personal morality, temperance, amus.e.m.e.nts, and manners at the beginning of the eighteenth century were not especially high, and in the reaction from Puritan control and strict religious observances the great ma.s.s of the people degenerated into positive irreligion and gross immorality. Drunkenness, rowdyism, robbery, blasphemy, brutality, lewdness, and prost.i.tution became very common. This moral decline of the people the Church of England seemed powerless to arrest.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 151. JOHN WESLEY (1707-82) Founder of Methodism.]
About 1730 a reform movement was begun under the able leadership of a young Oxford student by the name of John Wesley, ably seconded by George Whitefield (1714-70), with a view to reaching the cla.s.ses so completely untouched by the high State Church. By traveling over the country and preaching a gospel of repentance, personal faith, and better living, these two young men made a deep emotional appeal, and soon gained a strong hold on the poorer and more ignorant cla.s.ses of the people. Forbidden to preach in Anglican churches, and at times threatened with personal violence, these two men were in time forced into open rebellion against the Established Church. Finally they founded a new Church, which became known as the Methodist. [22] This new organization bore the same relation to the Church of England that the Anglican Church two hundred years before had borne to the Church of Rome. Thus was accomplished a second spiritual reformation in England, and one destined in time to spread to the colonies and deeply affect the lives of a large portion of the English people. [23]
That such a well-organized sect could arise, such a moral reformation be preached, and the power of the Established Church be challenged so openly and without serious persecution, speaks much for the growth of religious tolerance among the English people since the days of the great Elizabeth.
In 1778 the Roman Catholic Relief Act was adopted, and in 1779 dissenting ministers and schoolmasters were relieved from the disabilities under which they had so long remained. These acts indicate a further marked growth in religious tolerance on the part of the English nation. [24]
NEW EMANc.i.p.aTING AND EDUCATIVE INFLUENCES. In 1662 the first regular newspaper outside of Italy was established in England, and in 1702 the first daily paper. Small in size, printed on but one side of the sheet, and dealing wholly with local matters, these nevertheless marked the beginnings of that daily expression of popular opinion with which we are now so familiar. [25] After about 1705 the cheap political pamphlet made its appearance, and after 1710, instead of merely communicating news, the papers began the discussion of political questions.
By 1735 a revolution had been effected in England, and papers and presses began to be established in the chief cities and towns outside of London; the freedom of the press was in a large way completed, and newspapers, for the first time in the history of the world, were made the exponents of public opinion. The press in England in consequence became an educative force of great intellectual and political importance, and did much to compensate for the lack of a general system of schools for the people. In 1772 the right to publish the debates in Parliament was finally won, over the strenuous objections [26] of George III. In 1780 the first Sunday newspaper appeared, "on the only day the lower orders had time to read a paper at all," and, despite the efforts of religious bodies to suppress it, the Sunday paper has continued to the present and has contributed its quota to the education and enlightenment of mankind. In 1785 the famous London _Times_ began to appear. In the middle of the eighteenth century debating societies for the consideration of public questions arose, and in 1769 "the first public meeting ever a.s.sembled in England, in which it was attempted to enlighten Englishmen respecting their political rights" was held, and such meetings soon became of almost daily occurrence. All these influences stimulated political thinking to a high degree, and contributed not only to a desire for still larger political freedom but for the more general diffusion of the ability to read as well (R. 250).
Still other important new influences arose during the early part of the eighteenth century, each of which tended to awaken new desires for schools and learning. In 1678 the first modern printed story to appeal to the ma.s.ses, Bunyan"s _Pilgrim"s Progress_, appeared from the press. Written, as it had been, by a man of the people, its simple narrative form, its pa.s.sionate religious feeling, its picture of the journey of a pilgrim through a world of sin and temptation and trial, and its Biblical language with which the common people had now become familiar--all these elements combined to make it a book that appealed strongly to all who read or heard it read, and stimulated among the ma.s.ses a desire to read comparable to that awakened by the chaining of the English Bible in the churches a century before (R. 170). In 1719 the first great English novel, Defoe"s _Robinson Crusoe_, and in 1726 _Gulliver"s Travels_, added new stimulus to the desires awakened by Bunyan"s book. All three were books of the common people, whereas the dramas, plays, essays, and scholarly works previously produced had appealed only to a small educated cla.s.s. In 1751 what was probably the first circulating library of modern times was opened at Birmingham, and soon thereafter similar inst.i.tutions were established in other English cities.
SCIENCE AND MANUFACTURING; THE NEW ERA. England, too, from the first, showed an interest in and a tolerance toward the new scientific thinking scarcely found in any other land. This in itself is indicative of the great intellectual progress which the English people had by this time made. [27] At a time when Galileo, in Italy, was fighting, almost alone, for the right to think along the lines of the new scientific method and being imprisoned for his pains, Englishmen were reading with deep interest the epoch-making scientific writings of Lord Francis Bacon, Earlier than in other lands, too, the Newtonian philosophy found a place in the instruction of the national universities, and English scholars began to employ the new scientific method in their search for new truths. The British Royal (Scientific) Society [28] had begun to meet as early as 1645, and ever since has published in its proceedings the best of English scientific thinking. By the reign of George I (1714-27) scientific work began to be popularized, and the first little booklets on scientific subjects began to appear. These popular presentations of what had been worked out were sold at the book stalls and by peddlers and were eagerly read; by the beginning of the reign of George III (1760) they had become very common. In 1704-10 the first "Dictionary of Arts and Sciences" was printed, and in 1768-71 the first edition (three volumes) of the now famous _Encyclopedia Britannica_ appeared. In 1755 the famous British Museum was founded.
As early as 1698 a rude form of steam engine had been patented in England, and by 1712 this had been perfected sufficiently to be used in pumping water from the coal mines. In 1765 James Watt made the real beginning of the application of steam to industry by patenting his steam engine; in 1760 Wedgwood established the pottery industry in England; in 1767 Hargreaves devised the spinning-jenny, which banished the spindle and distaff and the old spinning-wheel; in 1769 Arkwright evolved his spinning-frame; and in 1785 Cartwright completed the process by inventing the power loom for weaving. In 1784 a great improvement in the smelting of iron ores (puddling) was worked out. These inventions, all English, were revolutionary in their effect on manufacturing. They meant the displacement of hand power by machine labor, the breakdown of home industry through the concentration of labor in factories, the rise of great manufacturing cities, [29] and the ultimate collapse of the age-old apprenticeship system of training, where the master workman with a few apprentices in his shop prepared goods for sale. They also meant the ultimate transformation of England from an agricultural into a great manufacturing and exporting nation, whose manufactured products would be sold in every corner of the globe.
By 1750 a change in att.i.tude toward all the old intellectual problems had become marked in England, and by 1775 attention before unknown was being given there to social, political, economic, and educational questions.
Religious intolerance was dying out, the harsh laws of earlier days had begun to be modified, new social and political interests [30] were everywhere attracting attention, and the great commercial expansion of England was rapidly taking shape. With England and France leading in the new scientific studies; England in the van in the development of manufacturing and the French to the fore in social influences and polite literature; England and the new American Colonies setting new standards in government by the people; the French theorists and economists giving the world new ideas as to the function of the State; enlightened despots on the thrones of Prussia, Austria, Spain, and Russia; and the hatreds of the hundred years of religious warfare dying out; the world seemed to many, about 1775, as on the verge of some great and far-reaching change in methods of living and in government, and about ready to enter a new era and make rapid advances in nearly all lines of human activity. The change came, but not in quite the manner expected.
IV. INSt.i.tUTION OF CONSt.i.tUTIONAL GOVERNMENT AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN AMERICA
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 152. NATIONALITY OF THE WHITE POPULATION, AS SHOWN BY THE FAMILY NAMES IN THE CENSUS OF 1790.]
ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA ESTABLISH A REPUBLIC. Though the early settlement of America, as was pointed out in chapter xv, was made from among those people and from those lands which had embraced some form of the Protestant faith, and represented a number of nationalities and several religious sects, the thirteen colonies, nevertheless, were essentially English in origin, speech, habits, observances, and political and religious conceptions. This is well shown for the white population by the results of the first Federal census, taken in 1790, as given in the adjoining figure.
This shows that of all the people in the thirteen original States, 83.5 per cent possessed names indicating pure English origin, and that 91.8 per cent had names which pointed to their having come from the British Isles.
The largest non-British name nationality was the German, with 5.6 per cent of the whole, and these were found chiefly in Pennsylvania where they const.i.tuted 26.1 per cent of the State"s population. Next were those having Dutch names, who const.i.tuted but 2 per cent of the total population, and but 16.1 per cent of the population of New York. No other name-nationality const.i.tuted over one half of one per cent of the total.
The New England States were almost as English as England itself, 93 to 96 per cent of the names being pure English, and 98.5 to 99.8 per cent being from the British Isles.
We thus see that it was from England, the nation which had done most in the development of individual and religious liberty, that the great bulk of the early settlers of America came, and in the New World the English traditions as to const.i.tutional government and liberty under law were early and firmly established. The centuries of struggle for representative government in England at once bore fruit here. Colony charters, charters of rights and liberties, public discussion, legislative a.s.semblies, and liberty under law were from the first made the foundation stones upon which self-government in America was built up.
From an early date the American Colonies showed an independence to which even Englishmen were scarcely accustomed, and when the home government attempted to make the colonists pay some of the expenses of the Seven Years" War, and a larger share of the expenses of colonial administration, there was determined opposition. Having no representation in Parliament and no voice in levying the tax, the colonists declared that taxation without representation was tyranny, and refused to pay the taxes a.s.sessed.
Standing squarely on their rights as Englishmen, the colonists were gradually forced into open rebellion. In 1765, and again in 1774, Declarations of Rights were drawn up and adopted by representatives from the Colonies, and were forwarded to the King. In 1774 the first Continental Congress met and formed a union of the Colonies; in 1776 the Colonies declared their independence. This was confirmed, in 1783, by the Treaty of Paris; in 1787, the Const.i.tution of the United States was drafted; and in 1789, the American government began. In the preamble to the twenty-seven charges of tyranny and oppression made against the King in the Declaration of Independence, we find a statement of political philosophy [31] which is a combination of the results of the long English struggle for liberty and the French eighteenth-century reform philosophy and revolutionary demands. [32] This preamble declared:
We hold these truths to be self-evident--that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are inst.i.tuted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to inst.i.tute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
AMERICAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO WORLD HISTORY. The American Revolution and its results were fraught with great importance for the future political and educational progress of mankind. Before the close of the eighteenth century the new American government had made at least four important contributions to world liberty and progress which were certain to be of large political and educational value for the future.
In the first place, the people of the Colonies had erected independent governments and had shown the possibility of the self-government of peoples on a large scale, and not merely in little city-states or communities, as had previously been the case where self-government had been tried. Democratic government was here worked out and applied to large areas, and to peoples of diverse nationalities and embracing different religious faiths. The possibility of States selecting their rulers and successfully governing themselves was demonstrated.
In the second place, the new American government which was formed did something new in world history when it united thirteen independent and autonomous States into a single federated Nation, and without destroying the independence of the States. What was formed was not a league, or confederacy, as had existed at different times among differing groups of the Greek City-States, and from time to time in the case of later Swiss and temporary European national groupings, but the union into a substantial and permanent Federal State of a number of separate States which still retained their independence, and with provision for the expansion of this national Union by the addition of new States. This federal principle in government is probably the greatest political contribution of the American Union to world development. In the twentieth- century conception of a League of Nations it has borne still further fruit.
In the third place, the different American States changed their old Colonial Charters into definite written Const.i.tutions, each of which contained a Preamble or Bill of Rights which affirmed the fundamental principles of democratic liberty (R. 251). These now became the fundamental law for each of the separate States, and the same idea was later worked out in the Const.i.tution of the United States. These were the first written const.i.tutions of history, and have since served as a type for the creation of const.i.tutional government throughout the world. In such doc.u.ments to-day free peoples everywhere define the rights and duties and obligations which they regard as necessary to their safety and happiness and welfare.
Finally, the Federal Const.i.tution provided for the inestimable boon of religious liberty, and in a way that was both revolutionary and wholesome.
At the beginning of the War for Independence the Anglican (Episcopal) faith had been declared "the established religion" in seven of the Colonies, and the Congregational was the established religion in three of the New England Colonies, while but three Colonies had declared for religious freedom and refused to give a preference to any special creed.
This religious problem had to be met by the Const.i.tutional Convention, and this body handled it in the only way it could have been intelligently handled in a nation composed of so many different religious sects as was ours. It simply incorporated into the Federal Const.i.tution provisions which guaranteed the free exercise of their religious faith to all, and forbade the establishment by Congress of any state religion, or the requirement of any religious test as a prerequisite to holding any office under the control of the Federal Government. The American people thus took a stand for religious liberty at a time when the hatreds of the Reformation still burned fiercely, and when tolerance in religious matters was as yet but little known.
IMPORTANCE OF THE RELIGIOUS-LIBERTY CONTRIBUTION. The solution of the religious question arrived at was only second in importance for us to the establishment of the Federal Union, and the far-reaching significance to our future national life of the sane and for-the-time extraordinary provisions incorporated into our National Const.i.tution can hardly be overestimated. This action led to the early abandonment of state religions, religious tests, and public taxation for religion in the old States, and to the prohibition of these in the new. The importance of this solution of the religious question for the future of popular education in the United States was great, for it laid the foundations upon which our systems of free, common, public, tax-supported, non-sectarian schools have since been built up. How we could have erected a common public-school system on a religious basis, with the many religious sects among us, it is impossible to conceive. Instead, we should have had a series of feeble, jealous, antagonistic, and utterly inefficient church-school systems, chiefly confined to elementary education, and each largely intent on teaching its peculiar church doctrines and struggling for an increasing share of public funds.
How much the American people owe to the Fathers of the Republic for this most enlightened and intelligent provision, few who have not thought carefully on the matter can appreciate. To it we must trace not only the great blessing of religious liberty, which we have so long enjoyed, but also the final establishment of our common, free, public-school systems.
The beginning of the new state motive for education, which was soon to supersede the religious motive, dates from the establishment with us of republican governments; and the beginning of the emanc.i.p.ation of education from church domination goes back to this wise provision inserted in our National Const.i.tution.
This national att.i.tude was later copied in the state const.i.tutions, and as a preamble to practically all we find a Bill of Rights, which in almost every case included a provision for freedom of religious worship (Rs. 251, 260). After the middle of the nineteenth century a further provision prohibiting sectarian teaching or state aid to sectarian schools was everywhere added.
V. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION SWEEPS AWAY ANCIENT ABUSES
NEW DEMANDS FOR REFORM THAT COULD NOT BE RESISTED. More than in any other continental European country France had, by 1783, become a united nation, conscious of a modern national feeling. Yet in France mediaeval abuses in both State and Church had survived, as we have seen, to as great an extent almost as in any European nation. So determined were the clergy and n.o.bility to retain their old powers, not only in France but throughout the continent of Europe as well, that progressive reform seemed well-nigh impossible. The work of the benevolent despots had, after all, been superficial. By the last quarter of the eighteenth, though, a progressive change was under way which was certain to produce either evolution or revolution. The influence of the American experiment in nation-building now became p.r.o.nounced. In 1779 Franklin took a copy of the new Pennsylvania Const.i.tution with him to Paris, and in 1780 John Adams did the same with the Ma.s.sachusetts Const.i.tution. Frenchmen instantly recognized here, in concrete form, the ideas with which their own heads were filled. In 1783 Franklin published in France a French translation of all the American Const.i.tutions, and the National Const.i.tution of 1787 was as eagerly read and discussed in Paris as in New York or Philadelphia or Boston. America appeared to the French of that stormy period as an ideal land; where the dreams of Rousseau about the social contract had been transformed into realities. Two years later the _cahiers_ of the Third Estate demanded a written const.i.tution for France. The French, too, had aided the American Colonies in their struggle for liberty, and French soldiers returning home carried back new political ideas drawn from the remarkable political progress of the new American Nation. By 1788 the demand for reform in France had become so insistent, and the condition of the treasury of the State was so bad, that it was finally felt necessary to summon a meeting of the States-General--a sort of national parliament consisting of representatives of the three great Estates: clergy, n.o.bility, and commons--which had not met in France since 1614.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 153. THE STATES-GENERAL IN SESSION AT VERSAILLES (After a contemporary drawing by Monnet)]
Besides electing its representatives, each locality and order was allowed to draw up a series of instructions, or _cahiers_ (+R. 252+), for the guidance of its delegates. These _cahiers_ are a mine of information as to the demands and hopes and interests of the French people, [33] and it is interesting to know that the _cahiers_ of n.o.bility, clergy, and commons alike included, among their demands, the organization of a comprehensive plan of education for France. [34]
FRANCE ESTABLISHES CONSt.i.tUTIONAL GOVERNMENT. The States-General met May 5, 1789, and soon (June 20) resolved itself into the National or Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly. Terrified by the uprisings and burnings of chateaux throughout France, on the night of August fourth, in a few hours, it adopted a series of decrees which virtually abolished the _Ancien Regime_ of privileges for France. The n.o.bility gave up most of their old rights, the serfs [35] were freed, and the special privileges of towns were surrendered. Later the a.s.sembly adopted a "Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen" (R. 253), much like the American Declaration of Independence. This declared, among other things, that all men were born free and have equal rights, that taxes should be proportional to wealth, that all citizens were equal before the law and have a right to help make the laws, and that the people of the nation were sovereign. These principles struck at the very foundations of the old system.