G. A. Henty - "At Agincourt"

G. A. Henty - "With Buller in Natal"

George William Curtis - "Ars Recte Vivende"

G. Harvey Ralphson - "Boy Scouts in the Philippines"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Historical and Political Essays

W >> William Edward Hartpole Lecky >> Historical and Political Essays




It is a story which is certainly not without its lesson to our own
time. It is very improbable that any future statesman will follow the
example of George Grenville, and endeavour by Act of Parliament to
impose taxation on a self-governing colony; but it would be a grave
error to suppose that the danger of unwise parliamentary interference
in Indian and colonial affairs has diminished. Great as are the
advantages of telegraphs and newspapers in the government of the
Empire, they are not without their drawbacks. Government by telegraph
is a very dangerous thing, and there is, I fear, an increasing
tendency to override local knowledge, and to apply English standards
and methods of government to wholly un-English conditions.
Ill-considered resolutions of the House of Commons, often passed in
obedience to some popular fad, and without any real intention of
carrying them into effect; language used in Parliament which is often
due to no deeper motive than a desire to win the favour of some class
of voters in an English constituency, may do as much as serious
misgovernment to alienate great masses of British subjects beyond the
sea. All really competent judges are agreed that one of the first
conditions of successful government in India has been that Indian
questions have for the most part been kept out of the range of English
party politics, and that Indian government has been conducted on
principles essentially different from democratic government at home.

On the whole, however, it is impossible to review the colonial history
of England without being struck with the many serious dangers that
might easily have shattered the Empire, which were averted by wise
statesmanship and timely--or at least not fatally tardy--concession.
There was the question of the criminal population which we once
transported to Australia. In the early stage of the colony, when the
population was very sparse and the need for labour very imperative,
this was not regarded as in any degree a grievance; but the time came
when it became a grievance of the gravest kind, and the Imperial power
had at length the wisdom to abandon it. There was the question of the
different and hostile religious bodies existing in different portions
of the Empire, at a time when the monopoly of political power by the
members of a single Established Church, the exclusive endowment of its
clergy, and the maintenance of the purely Protestant character of the
English Government were cherished as religious duties by politicians
at home. Yet at this very time an established and endowed Roman
Catholic Church was flourishing in Canada, and there were numerous
examples throughout the British dominions of the concurrent endowment
of different forms of religious belief by the State,[5] while in India
it abstained, with an extreme, and sometimes even an exaggerated,
scrupulousness, from all measures that could by any possibility offend
the native religious prejudices. There was the question of
Slavery--though we were freed from the most difficult part of this
problem by the secession of America. In addition, however, to its
moral aspects, it affected most vitally the material prosperity of
some of our richest colonies; it raised the very dangerous
constitutional question of the right of the Imperial Parliament to
interfere with the internal affairs of a self-governing colony, and it
brought the Home Government into more serious collision with the local
Governments than any question since the American Revolution. Whatever
may be thought of the wisdom of the measures by which we abolished
slavery in our West Indian colonies, no one at least can deny the
liberality of a Parliament which voted from Imperial resources twenty
millions for the accomplishment of the work. There was the conflict of
race and creed which between 1830 and 1840 had brought Canada to
absolute rebellion, and threatened a complete alienation of Canadian
feeling from the mother-country. This discontent was effectually
allayed and dispelled by the union of Upper and Lower Canada under a
system of constitutional government of the most liberal character,
which gave the colonists on all subjects of internal legislation a
legislative independence that was in practice almost complete.
Considered as a measure of conciliation this has proved one of the
most successful of the nineteenth century, and in spite of a few
discordant notes it may be truly said that there are few greater
contrasts in the present reign than are presented between Canadian
feeling towards the mother-country when Queen Victoria ascended the
throne and Canadian feeling at the present hour. There was also the
great and dangerous task to be accomplished of adapting the system of
colonial government to the different stages of colonial development.
There was a time when the colonies were so weak that they depended
mainly on England for their protection; but, unlike some of the great
colonising Powers of ancient and modern times, England never drew a
direct tribute from her colonies, and, in spite of much unwise and
some unjust legislation, I believe there was never a time when they
were not on the whole benefited by the connection. Soon, however, the
colonies grew to the strength and maturity of nationhood, and the
mother-country speedily recognised the fact, and allowed no unworthy
or ungenerous fears to restrain her from granting them the fullest
powers, both of self-government and of federation. It is true that she
still sends out a governor--usually drawn from the ranks of
experienced and considerable English public men--to preside over
colonial affairs. It is true that she retains a right of veto which is
scarcely ever exercised except to prevent some intercolonial or
international dispute, some act of violence, or some grave anomaly in
the legislation of the Empire. It is true that colonial cases may be
carried, on appeal, to an English tribunal, representing the very
highest judicial capacity of the mother-country, and free from all
possibility and suspicion of partiality; but I do not believe that any
of these light ties are unpopular with any considerable section of the
colonists. On the other hand, though it would be idle to suppose that
our great colonies depend largely upon the mother-country, I believe
that most colonists recognise that there is something in the weight
and dignity attaching to fellow-membership and fellow-citizenship in
a great Empire--something in the protection of the greatest navy in
the world--something in the improved credit which connection with a
very rich centre undoubtedly gives to colonial finance.

It is the custom of our friends and neighbours on the Continent to
bestow much scornful remark on the egotism of English policy, which
attends mainly to the interests of the British Empire, and is not
ready to make war for an idea and in support of the interests of
others. I think, if it were necessary, we might fairly defend
ourselves by showing that in the past we have meddled with the affairs
of other nations quite as much as is reasonable. For my own part, I
confess that I distrust greatly these explosions of military
benevolence. They always begin by killing a great many men. They
usually end in ways that are not those of a disinterested
philanthropy. After all, an egotism that mainly confines itself to the
well-being of about a fifth part of the globe cannot be said to be of
a very narrow type, and it is essentially by her conduct to her own
Empire that the part of England in promoting the happiness of mankind
must be ultimately judged. It is indeed but too true that many of the
political causes which have played a great part on platforms, in
parties, and in Parliaments are of such a nature that their full
attainment would not bring relief to one suffering human heart, or
staunch one tear of pain, or add in any appreciable degree to the real
happiness of a single home. But most assuredly Imperial questions are
not of this order. Remember what India had been for countless ages
before the establishment of British rule. Think of its endless wars of
race and creed, its savage oppressions, its fierce anarchies, its
barbarous customs; and then consider what it is to have established
for so many years over the vast space from the Himalayas to Cape
Comorin a reign of perfect peace; to have conferred upon more than two
hundred and fifty millions of the human race perfect religious
freedom, perfect security of life, liberty, and property; to have
planted in the midst of these teeming multitudes a strong central
government, enlightened by the best knowledge of Western Europe, and
steadily occupied in preventing famine, alleviating disease,
extirpating savage customs, multiplying the agencies of civilisation
and progress. This is the true meaning of that system of government on
which Mr. Cobden looked with 'an eye of despair.' What work of human
policy--I would even say what form of human philanthropy--has ever
contributed more largely to reduce the great sum of human misery and
to add to the possibilities of human happiness?

And if we turn to the other side of our Empire, although it is quite
true that our great free colonies are fully capable of shaping their
destinies for themselves, may we not truly say that these noble
flowers have sprung from British and from Irish seeds? May we not say
that the laws, the Constitutions, the habits of thought and character
that have so largely made them what they are, are mainly of English
origin? May we not even add that it is in no small part due to their
place in the British Empire that these vast sections of the globe,
with their diverse and sometimes jarring interests, have remained at
perfect peace with us and with each other, and have escaped the curse
of an exaggerated militarism, which is fast eating like a canker into
the prosperity of the great nations of Europe?

When responsible government was conceded by the British Government to
her more important colonies, it was done in the fullest and largest
measure. Although the mother-country remained burdened with the task
of defending them she made no reservation securing for herself free
trade with her colonies or even preferential treatment, and she
surrendered unconditionally to the local legislatures the waste and
unoccupied lands which had long been regarded in England as held in
trust for the benefit of the Empire as a whole. The growing belief
that the connection with the colonies was likely to be a very
transitory one, and also the belief that free-trade doctrines were
likely speedily to prevail, no doubt influenced English statesmen, and
it is not probable that any of them foresaw that both Canada and
Australia would speedily make use of their newly acquired power to
impose heavy duties on English goods. The strongly protectionist
character which the English colonies assumed at a time when England
had committed herself to the most extreme free-trade policy tended no
doubt to separation, and when the English Government adopted the
policy of withdrawing its garrisons from the colonies, when the North
American colonies, with the full assent of the mother-country, formed
themselves into a great federation, and when a movement in the same
direction sprang up in Australia, it was the opinion of some of the
most sagacious statesmen and thinkers in England that the time of
separation was very near.[6]

On the whole, however, these predictions have hitherto been falsified.
The federation of North America and, at a later period, the federation
of Australia have been followed by an increased and not a diminished
disposition on the side of the colonists to draw closer the ties with
the mother-country, while in England the popular imagination has been
more and more impressed with the growing magnitude and importance of
her colonial dominions. The tendency towards great political
agglomerations based upon an affinity of race, language and creed,
which has produced the Pan-Slavonic movement and the Pan-Germanic
movement, and which chiefly made the unity of Italy, has not been
without its influence in the English-speaking world, and it is felt
that a close union between its several parts is essential if it is
fully to maintain its relative position under the new conditions of
the world. The English-speaking nations comprise the most rapidly
increasing, the most progressive, the most happily situated nations of
the earth, and if their power and influence are not wasted by internal
quarrels their type of civilisation must one day become dominant in
the world.

Whether their harmony and unity are likely to be attained is one of
the great problems of the future, but the ideal is one which every
patriotic Englishman should at least set before him. It is not one
which can be called an assured destiny, and to many the chances seem
on the whole against it. Unexpected collisions of interest or passion
or ambition may at any time mar the prospects, and in great
democracies largely influenced by demagogues and by an irresponsible
and anonymous Press there are always powerful agencies that do not
make for peace. Immediate party interests both at home and in the
colonies too frequently blind men to distant and ulterior
consequences, and the many ill-wishers to the British Empire are sure
to direct their policy largely to its disruption. The natural bond of
union of a great Empire is economical unity, binding its several parts
together by a common system of free trade and by a common commercial
policy towards other Powers. Unfortunately the profoundly different
policy adopted on these matters in England and her colonies has made
such a Union almost impracticable, and it is quite possible for the
English colonies to be united by closer commercial ties with foreign
countries than with the mother-country. The question of the common
defence of the Empire and the question of the representation of the
colonies in Imperial politics are also questions of great difficulty
and of pressing importance.

Something has been done showing at least a disposition to meet them.
The concession of preferential duties in favour of England by some of
our most important colonies, the small subsidies made to the
maintenance of the British navy, and the far more important military
assistance given by the colonies to the mother-country in the Egyptian
and the South African wars are indicative of the feeling of closer
unity which has grown up between England and her colonies, and in
addition to the appointment of Agents-General, the introduction of a
few eminent colonial judges into the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council, which is the Supreme Court of Appeal of the Empire, has given
the colonies some real representation in Imperial affairs. Much more,
however, in this direction may be done. There have been several
instances of eminent colonials obtaining seats in the English House of
Commons to the great advantage of the Empire, but a regular
representation of the colonies in this assembly may, I think, be
dismissed as altogether impracticable. The mere distance is a
sufficient objection, and at least nine-tenths of the business of the
House of Commons deals with purely English questions depending for
their wise solution on inherited English habits and on compromises
with existing institutions, and a large proportion of them are
problems which have been already dealt with in the colonies on other
grounds and without any of the complexities of an old country. What
reason could there be for calling in the colonists to adjudicate,
perhaps even to turn the balance, on questions relating to English
education, English licensing laws, English taxation, English
dispositions of property? The difficulty of distinguishing between
Imperial and local questions would be insuperable. The division of the
House into two categories of members with distinct spheres of voting
power would prove unworkable, and the colonial representatives would
during most of their time in Parliament have nothing to do. An
increase in the number of peers drawn from the colonies would be less
impracticable, but there would be much that is invidious in the
choice; much danger that the colonial peers living in England would
get out of touch with the colonies and become an object of envy and
jealousy; and English lawyers do not think that a large infusion of
colonial law peers would raise the competence of the Supreme Judicial
Tribunal of the Empire, which represents at present the highest legal
talent and attainments in England and deals mainly with English legal
questions. A Consultative Council, however, consisting of the
Agents-General and perhaps reinforced by additional colonial
representatives and dealing exclusively with Imperial questions, does
not seem wholly impracticable, and many competent judges believe that
a supreme legal tribunal for dealing with inter-colonial and
international conflicts might be constructed which would be both more
efficient and more representative than any that now exists.

It is probable, however, that the true tie that must unite the
different portions of the Empire must be mainly a moral one. In the
conditions of modern life no power is likely to maintain long a vast,
scattered, heterogeneous Empire if the central governing power within
it has declined; if through want of efficiency, or moral energy, or
moral purity, it ceases to win the respect of its several parts. It is
no less true that the cohesion can only be permanently maintained by
the wide diffusion of a larger and Imperial patriotism, pervading the
whole like a vital principle; binding men by the ties of pride and of
affection to the great Empire to which they belong, and subordinating
to its maintenance local and party and class interests. If this spirit
dies out, the movement of disintegration is sure to begin. No
political machinery, no utilitarian calculation, will in the long run
be powerful enough to arrest it.

What may be the future place of these islands in the government of the
world no human being can foretell. Nations, as history but too plainly
shows, have their periods of decay as well as their periods of growth.
The balance of power in the world is constantly shifting. Maxims and
influences very different from those which made England what she is
are in the ascendant, and the clouds upon the horizon are neither few
nor slight. But, whatever fate may be in store for these islands, and
for the political unity we so justly prize, we may at least
confidently predict that no revolution in human affairs can now
destroy the future ascendancy of the English language and of the
Imperial race. Whatever misfortunes, whatever humiliations the future
may reserve to us, they cannot deprive England of the glory of having
created this mighty Empire.

Not Heaven itself upon the Past has power.
But what has been, has been--and we have had our hour.


FOOTNOTES:

[3] _Autobiography_, ii. pp. 234, 235.

[4] Mr. Bayard.

[5] See the enumeration of these endowments in Gladstone's _State and
Church_, Ch. IX.

[6] See Cairnes' _Political Essays_, 49-50, 56.




IRELAND IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY


The kind of interest which belongs to Irish history is curiously
different from that which attaches to the history of England and to
that of most of the great nations of the Continent. In very few
histories do we find so little national unity or continuous progress,
or such long spaces which are almost wholly occupied by perplexed,
petty internal broils, often stained by atrocious crimes, but turning
on no large issue and leading to no clear or stable results. Except
during the great missionary period of the sixth and seventh centuries,
and during a brief portion of the eighteenth century, we have little
of the interest that arises from dramatic situations or shining
characters, and in few countries has the highest intellect been, on
the whole, so slightly connected with the administration of affairs.
To a philosophical student of politics, however, Irish history
possesses an interest of the highest order. It is an invaluable study
of morbid anatomy. In very few histories can we trace so clearly the
effects of political and social circumstances in forming national
character; the calamity of missed opportunities and of fluctuating and
procrastinating policy; the folly of attempting to govern by the same
methods and institutions nations that are wholly different in their
characters and their civilisation.

The idea which still floats vaguely in many minds that Ireland, before
the arrival of the Normans, was a single and independent nation, is
wholly false. Ireland was not a nation, but a collection of separate
tribes and kingdoms, engaged in almost constant warfare. In this
respect, however, she resembled many countries which have since
attained the most perfect unity, and there can be little doubt that,
if her development had been impeded by no extraneous influences,
Ireland would have followed the same path as England or France. Much
stress has been justly laid on the disorganising influence of a long
succession of Danish invasions, though it must be remembered that
Ireland owes to the Danes the foundation of some of her most important
cities. Roman conquest, which introduced into most of Europe
invaluable elements of order, organisation, and respect for law, never
extended to Ireland. The Anglo-Norman invasion and conquest produced
consequences which were almost wholly evil. If the invaders had been
driven from the Irish shore, the natural course of development would,
no doubt, have been in time continued. If the invaders had completely
conquered Ireland, a fusion might have taken place as complete and as
healthy as in England. Neither of these two events occurred. The
English conquest was prolonged over nearly four hundred years. A
hostile and separate power was planted in the centre of Ireland
sufficiently powerful to prevent the formation of another
civilisation, yet not sufficiently powerful to impose a civilisation
of its own. Feudalism was introduced, but the keystone of the system,
a strong resident sovereign, was wanting, and Ireland was soon torn by
the wars of great Anglo-Norman nobles, who were, in fact, independent
sovereigns, much like the old Irish kings. The Scotch invasion of the
fourteenth century added enormously to the anarchy and confusion; the
English power as a living reality contracted to the narrow limits of
the pale; in outlying districts the Anglo-Norman assimilated quickly
with the Celtic element, while the English legislators in Ireland,
alarmed at the tendency, made it the main object of their policy, in
the words of Sir John Davies, 'to make a perpetual separation and
enmity between the English and Irish, pretending no doubt that the
English should in the end root out the Irish.'

Such a state of things continued till the long and terrible wars of
Henry VIII. and Elizabeth broke the power of the independent chiefs
and of the Celtic clans, and gave Ireland, for the first time, a
political unity. It is one of the great infelicities of Irish history
that this result was obtained at the very period of the Reformation.
The conquerors adopted one religion, while the conquered retained the
other, and thus a new and most enduring barrier was raised between the
two nations in Ireland, and a pernicious antagonism was established
between law and religion.

Another influence not less powerful than religion had at the same time
come into play. It had become the English policy to place great bodies
of English and Scotch settlers on the land that was confiscated in
consequence of rebellion, and under the impulse of the strong spirit
of adventure which grew up in the generation that followed the
Reformation, streams of English and Scotch adventurers poured over.
The great settlement of Ulster under James I. proved ultimately a
success, and laid the foundation of the prosperity of that province.
Other plantations were in time absorbed and assimilated by the Celtic
population; but vast revolutions in the ownership of land, accompanied
by the subversion of the old tribal customs, laid the foundation of an
agrarian war which still continues.

Religious and agrarian causes combined with the civil war in England
to produce the great rebellion of 1641 and the eleven years of
ghastly, exterminating war which followed. Hardly any page in human
history is more appalling. A full third of the population of Ireland
perished. Thirty or forty thousand of the most energetic left the
country and took service in foreign armies. Great tracts were left
absolutely depopulated, and after the rearrangement of land, which was
accomplished by the Act of Settlement, the immense preponderance of
landed property remained in the hands of the Protestant nation.

New elements, however, of great energy had been planted in Ireland,
and the field had been thrown open to their exertions. The excellence
of Irish wool and the cheapness of Irish labour laid the foundation of
a flourishing woollen manufacture, and with peace, mild
administration, and much practical tolerance, the wounds of the
country seemed gradually healing. The later Stuart reigns, which form
a dark page in English history, were a period of considerable
prosperity in Ireland, but that period was soon interrupted by the
Revolution. There was no general or passionate rising in Ireland
resembling that of 1641, but it was inevitable that the Irish
Catholics should have adopted the side of the Catholic King, and it
was equally inevitable that when a Catholic Parliament, consisting
largely of sons of the men whose properties had recently been
confiscated, had assembled at Dublin, its members should have made a
desperate effort to reverse their fortunes and replace the land of the
country mainly in Catholic hands. The battle of the Boyne shattered
the Catholic hopes, and it was followed by a new confiscation, by a
new emigration of the ablest and most energetic Catholics, by a long
period of commercial restraints, penal laws, and complete Protestant
ascendancy.

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