PAST AND PRESENT: HAVE WE IMPROVED ?
By ROSE MACAULAY
ARE the English_ (British, of course I mean) on the whole a more agreeable and virtuous people in the twentieth century than in centuries past ? The only intelligent answer is, I suppose, in which century past ? I mean by the British, the inhabitants, at any given period, of Great Britain. They are certainly not a race : they are a mob of races.
" Fate jumbled them together, God knows how ; Whate'er they were, they're true-born English now,"
as Defoe observed. Let us consider them, casting down history one of those bird's-eye glances which see but little here below, but see that little clear.
First, then, the Iberians. How amiable and virtuous these dark little beings were through the stone and bronze ages, it is not quite easy to discern. The Phoenicians used to call on them, but apparently rather for commercial than social purposes. Industrious and ingenious they must have been, and with a formicarian tendency to drag about loads which wereAsurely) too large for them, and a more than formicarian capacity for setting them up on end ; hence, out of the mists that surround them, looms Stonehenge. Yes ; there- must have been something rather nice, rather painstaking and tenacious, about little creatures who conceived and executed Stonehenge. Still, did we know more of them, we should no doubt perceive in them many grave faults, such as human sacrifice, perhaps on these very stones. As to the Celts, who followed them later on into our desirable isle, we all know what they were and are--tall, red-haired people of immense and somewhat ferocious activity, very religious, somewhat superstitious, definitely Druid-ridden, and persistently disagreeable to foreigners. Julius Caesar found them as peculiar as continental visitors have always found us. Still, that is really nothing much against us. We put up a good fight against the Romans, though, owing to not having marched with the times, we clung to such conservative methods of warfare as scythed chariots. Even when absorbed into the Roinan empire, we showed our capacity for keeping ourselves to ourselves, remarking " We are not im- pressed," and remaining, in brief, islanders.
It is, at this distant date, difficult for the impartial observer to decide whether our next invaders (Nordic, to give them all a general covering name) were more or less disagreeable than the partially Romanized Celts and Iberians whom they found here. Comparing the com- plaints of the contemporary writers, one would put it, roughly, at fifty fifty. Both were cruel, neither kept their words. The Nordics were the more constantly and the more profoundly inebriated ; on the other hand, and possibly in consequence, they wrote better verse. Both, in their slightly different ways, were highly religious. Anyhow, they all shook down together somehow, and formed a not wholly displeasing nation, with considerable, if ill-directed, political sense, and apparently more taste for personal liberty (seldom grati- fied) than most nations. We had the same reverence for the moneyed aristocracy that we have today, or even more ; we knew, even then, that coronets were more than kind hearts and Norman blood than simple faith. We are probably less snobbish now than at any earlier time in history.
The fresh infusion of Norman blood (Scandinavian and Gallic) in the eleventh century seems to have made its more cruel, if possible, than before (for it is well known that the Continent has always been more cruel than ourselves) and strengthened feudal slavery.
By the time we reach (I must .apologize for reaching it so quickly, but space grows short) the fourteenth century, and see English society mirrored in those so different-contemporary novelists, Chaucer and Langland, we see a mixed lot, of some virtue, considerable high spirits, large appetites, much vulgarity and ill-behaviour, and great interest in trade. In fact, a society not at all unlike their descendants of today. It is to our credit that we seem to have evolved a less unpopular clergy. Our earlier clergy, both secular and religious, gave rise to a good deal of complaint and ill-feeling on the part of the laity, who were no doubt unjust. Our modern aristocracy seems definitely more virtuous and humane ; the earls and barons of those days com- ported themselves in a manner which would deeply shock our House of Lords. Monarchs have also con- siderably improved. Even the law is not quite so bad, either in substance or administration. It used to be complained that the poor man could get no justice in the law-courts. Today he may not get much, but at least he gets the same as the rich man. Juries have grown more independent and less prone to be flung into gaol by the judge, though I dare say they always goggled up at • him with the same receptive attention. Judges seem, on the whole, rather improved.
The law is certainly more humane. The days when it could sentence children to be hanged, men and women to be publicly whipped, to stand in pillories with cropped ears, to sit in stocks, to he burned, or hanged-drawn- and-quartered, are past. Public feeling, which leads the law, is also more humane. When we hear, as we recently heard, of African farm servants being flogged to death by ail employer for petty theft, we are indignant ; the flogger is even imprisoned. But the floggcrs, alas! still exist, and do what they can. Lately in this country a young servant committed suicide after being flogged by his employer. If we again had tortures and public executions, there would be a tremendous outcry from the majority. But some people would go miles to look at the spectacle, as they were wont to do. The savage iu us is weaker, and inure fettered ; but he is not out- grown. There are still those who praise war. But fewer, it is said, in this country than in any other. The British savage has been, anyhow from the later Middle Ages on, rather less cruel than the French, Spanish. Italian, or German. It was Voltaire who complained that his country, in many ways the most civilized in Europe, was also the most cruel in the punishments it permitted. lie can scarcely have given due attention to the Spanish penal code ; but, as regards the British, he was accurate. In our treatment of criminals, heretics, political offenders, conquered enemies, and even witches, our cruelty was far outdone in nearly all continental countries. In sport (i.e., hunting and frightening animals) we were probably much the same, and are still, only each nation chooses different animals for this purpose. But in kindness to animals the present day beats the past by a long head.
• Whether or no we are, as we like to believe, softer- hearted than other people, we are certainly more so than ever before. We have wider ideas as to our social responsibilities ; we carry one another's burdens in a manner never practised before ; private property is taxed for the community, in a manner which seems to some excessive, to others pitifully inadequate, but which at least is new. Many capitalists would like, no doubt, to be back in the good old days of feudalism and the safe and happy plutocrat.
1 sec that I have scarcely touched on our progress in other virtues than this great virtue of humaneness. Integrity ? There seem to be plenty of liars and thieves about still. Courage ? Plenty of that too. Good manners ? Better. anyhow, than in the days when one taunted one's literary foes with their physical defects, and made a show of hunchbacks. Washing ? Religious tolerance ? Inuncasurable advance in both. Are there other virtues ? I forget. But, whatever there are, I believe that we gain, on the.whole, more of them as time proceeds. The fact that time has not, so far as humanity is concerned, yet proceeded at all far should be remem- bered in our favour.
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