BOOKS•
ME. PEEL has followed up his analysis of England's isolation with a study of the household she has gathered round her for defence. Like his former book, it is an admirable survey of certain broad features of historical development. Mr. Peel has the sense of organic movement without which history is merely a dull chronicle of accidents ; and he has also the gift of wide perspective, bringing the events of a century or of four continents within easy view of the reader. The book is not only fresh and stimulating, but it has the unity which comes from the development of a single dominant idea. It is easy to give a fictitious clearness to an argument by hanging every detail on the peg of a single conception which may often be quite inadequate to the task. But the root-idea of Mr. Peel's work is no mechanical fancy, but a true organic prin- ciple, philosophically defensible, and on the whole justified by facts. Along with Mr. Bernard Holland's Imperium et Libertas, it forms an excellent justification on other than mercenary grounds of a sane Imperialism. It provides a constructive idea to aid us in studying the strange currents on which we have been carried to Empire. Mr. Peel does not aim at research. He quotes from the most accessible books on any subject, his intention being to expound accepted data, to shape and illuminate, rather than to quarry the raw material of history. Our only criticism is that in his endeavour to be perfectly clear he sometimes is a little prolix, and that now and then he is carried by rhetoric into a slight overstatement; but these
• The Friends of England. By the Hon. George PeeL London: John Murray. [12s. net.]
are small blemishes on a book where the matter is on the whole admirably arranged and attractively presented. The style is sometimes a thought too elaborate ; but it has moments of real distinction, and we commend the Chinese apologue in the concluding chapter to those who wish to read the case for and against the English record put with much candour and eloquence.
It used to be the fashion with certain historians to insist that we created our Empire in a fit of absent-mindedness, without policy or intelligence; while less friendly Continental writers declared that we achieved it through our insatiable avarice, having pursued for three centuries a resolute Machiavellian scheme of conquest. Mr. Peel's thesis is that neither one nor the other is true, but that we built up the Empire in sheer self-defence as a bulwark against the forward march of our European rivals. It is not a new doctrine. The late Mr. E. J. Payne, whose book was recently reviewed in our columns, defined the cause as "external pressure, and the indomitable resistance, promptly transformed into an irresistible counter-pressure, which it continuously pro- voked." It is probably, with certain obvious limitations, the correct view, for great things do not spring from low motives, nor do they come into being from no motives at all. The conflict between the European Powers which went on from the dawn of Monarchy was naturally transferred to battlegrounds oversee when the horizon of the world was widened by the age of discovery. "In Europe men fought for America and Asia : in America and Asia men fought for Europe. The only change was that in those far more spacious lists the charging knights would gather a doubly fierce
momentum in their old accustomed tourney for the universal prize." England was the last to accept the necessity for this extra-European contest, and when she entered upon it she had to face rivals already in possession. Up till then she had had no record of discovery, although an island people. Hakluyt, writing in 1589, could talk about our "sluggish security and continual neglect " of maritime enterprises. The truth is that we were forced into Empire unwillingly, that we began our colonising career with a succession of failures, and that the words of a statesman like Raleigh, who recognised our needs in advance of his time, fell on sceptical and unfriendly ears. But soon the necessity became too obvious to neglect, and the reign of James I. saw the founda- tions of the Colonies laid in the New World, and the first tentative commercial settlements which, against our desires, developed into British India.
Now comes the second part of Mr. Peel's thesis. Our Colonies naturally tended towards independence, and were only kept attached to us by the pressure of European antagonists. Therefore in periods of peace we find a loosening of ties, which are promptly re-knit on the outbreak of strife. The history of the last two centuries shows a very clear suc- cession of such stages. The Navigation Act would have been strongly resisted in New England but for the external pressure exercised upon that Colony by France, which regarded it as a part of England, and therefore an object of hostilities. The eighteenth-century wars with France and Spain were not merely a duel for the possession of the New World; they were England's struggles for existence, which could only be main- tained by resisting the indefinite growth of these European Powers oversee. In India the ambitions of France compelled us to consolidate our scattered factories into a State. But the moment the pressure was relaxed disruption set in. In the middle of the eighteenth century we see Indian officials asserting a strange independence of England and English traditions, and our American Colonies preparing to renounce the English connection. It was Vergennes who wrote :— " England will soon repent of having removed in France the only check which could keep her Colonies in awe." In that dark hour it was the pressure of the new. United States as felt by the United Empire loyalists, and the fear of France and the old regime felt by the French-Canadians, which kept Canada under our flag. The ascending power of France once more brought our Empire into line, and even, as in the case of the Cape, added to our terri- tory. Fear of Napoleon made us zealous for the estab- lishment of our Indian power, and led to the colonisation of Australia. A little later the menace of Russia compelled us to look to our Indian frontier and our prestige with:neigh- • Haktuytus Posthumus, or Purohas His Pityrimes. By Samuel Purchas, bouring States. And then, when the pressure relaxed, and Vols. L and II. Glasgow : MacLehose and Sous. [I2s. 6d. net each.] Europe became occupied with her own domestic quarrels, once more the colonists " began to ask themselves whether the time had not perhaps arrived for mutual independence." It was a feeling shared by the statesmen at home, and Little Englandism became for a decade the accepted creed of politicians of both parties. Russian pressure still kept India in line, but " our colonies were daily asserting their right to practical independence. The ebb-tide of hostile international forces beat no more on the quays of their distant continents. So they looked round the world and felt their own safety arising partly from their own increasing strength,
and partly from the apparent indifference of the world to them." The reaction was not long delayed, and was caused by the growing militarism combined with the colonial ambitions of our great European rivals. France in West Africa and Indo-China, Germany in South and East Africa and else- where, began to show intentions radically inconsistent with our safety; a spirit of uneasiness went abroad; and Colonies which a short time before had been proclaiming their self- sufficiency began to draw closer to us for protection :- " Our Indian administration felt the neighbourhood of the ever-advancing Russians. Australasia, divided into many states, became cognisant of her own weakness. Our South African fellow-subjects grew to know the hostility of the Dutch and the youthful ambitions of Germany. Canada saw how vigorous and aspiring a republic lay immediately across her border. We in our island understood that across our narrow strait were ranged the stupendous hosts of our immemorial rivals of the European world. To fortify : to arm : to co-ordinate schemes of defence or of counter-attack, if need be ; to render the Empire an im- pregnable fortress, or rather to create and organise an Empire,— all this presented itself as the imperative necessity of the sombre and portentous time."
In 1878 Lord Carnarvon remarked that he was "much
perplexed by a new word which has crept in among us." The new word was Imperialism.
It is a fascinating argument, and, with some limitations, a sound one. It may be that certain historical events are misread, and certain forces overestimated; but we think that Mr. Peel has fully proved his main contention,—that the Empire " has been the fruit, neither of chance, nor of rapine, but of a vital and overwhelming necessity," and that as the need slackened, the elements began to separate, only to reunite on the advent of a fresh peril. We have not space to analyse the argument of the concluding chapters, in which Mr. Peel discusses the possible dangers to the Empire,—the United States and what is loosely known as "the yellow peril," and gives weighty reasons for believing that neither is a real menace to our future. The last chapters are, indeed, in many ways the most notable part of the book, for they contain a defence of the moral ideal in the Empire that our necessity created which is worthy the attention of all serious and patriotic Englishmen.
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