357 



Character Sketch. 



TWO DETHRONED SOVEREIGNS : JOHN BULL AND OLD KING COAL. 



For heaven's sake, let us sit u 

 And tell sad stories of the deat 



I.— INTRODUCTORY. 



WE had a dim perception of what was coming. 

 But we never realised it till last month. Then 

 the truth— the bitter, cruel truth — smote us 

 between the eyes like the fist of a prize-fighter. Until 

 last month we were able to a\crt our gaze from the 

 unpalatable fact. Things might not be quite so 

 liad as they seemed. Appearances are ever deceitful, 

 and it is never wise to meet trouble half-way. But it 

 was no half-way last month. For the stern fact met 

 i:s face to face in the stand-and-deliver fashion of the 

 most ruthless highwayman, and bade us stand and 

 recognise the truth. 



We had all of us read with a listless interest of the 

 end of the Manchu dynasty. It seemed little better 

 than a stage play, the quaint ceremonial of abdication 

 which dismissed the Imperial household into private 

 life, discrowned an Emperor, and established the 

 ('hinese Republic. Yet all the while, if we had but 

 known it, there was being enacted in our midst the 

 deposition of sovereigns of much more ancient lineages, 

 the downfall of a dynasty and the establishment of 

 a new ruler on the prostrate throne. John Bull has 

 fallen, apparently to rise no more. The predominant 

 partner is predominant no more. The sceptre has 

 departed from England, and the over-lordship of the 

 three kingdoms has passed into the hands of her 

 junior, partners. And as it is with John Bull, so is it, 

 or soon will bu, with Old King Coal. Even at the 

 moment when in the pride of his might and in the 

 f)lenitude of his sovereignty he had doomed a whole 

 lution to starve and shi\er, the lilow had fallen. The 

 ' rlict had gone forth, his doom was sealed. There is 

 '•mething in it that recalls the irony of Belshazzar's 

 least :— 



TIh King was on his throne, 



I li'- Salraps throng'd the hall ; 

 A '! ' u-iand bright lamps shone 

 < i\t that high festival. 



In that same hour and hall, 

 1 If fiagers ol a hand 



Cm,.- lorth against the wall, 

 \:.l wrote as if on sand : 



" Bi 'In/zar's grave is made, 

 II kingdom p.^s^ed away ; 

 III . i I ilic halaiicc weighed, 

 I .i;;ht and worthless clay." 



Rut althougii the Mede is at his gate, the Persian 



only on the -i< ps of the throne. The lamps around 



ic bright, tjic piMphcsv-'s in view. And the dismayed 



\ellers find it impossible to turn their eyes from the 



Maie, menc, Uhil. upharsin " whirh portend the doom 



pon the ground, 



h of kings.— A'/«£' Ruhard II. 



of King Coal. Even in the hour of his .supreme 

 triumph the cup is dashed from his lips, and already 

 the shouting crowds are hailing the coronation of his 

 successor, President Oil. 



II.— THE DEPOSITION OF JOHN BULL. 

 Time was, not so \tT\ long ago, when a Prime 

 ^linister spoke with awed respect of John Bull as the 

 predominant partner. He may ha\e been so in the 

 nineteenth century. The twentieth finds him in a 

 strangely dift'erent position. For although business is 

 still carried on at the old stand, the junior partners 

 appeared to have acquired the major interest in the 

 concern. During the whole of the trying and troublous 

 crisis of last month, the wishes of England, the interest 

 of England, the word of England, counted for nothing. 

 The situation was dominated from first to last bv 

 Scotland and Wales. If want and woe and desolation 

 were carried ir>to a million English homesteads, it was 

 due to the imperious will of the Scotch and Welsh 

 partners in the Imperial concern. It is not for the 

 first time that the Scotch and the Welsh have spread 

 desolation through the English land. The marches 

 on the Welsh border have many grim tales to tell of 

 the devastating march of the Cymri. Northumber- 

 land's history is one long bloodstained record of forays 

 from across the Border — forays which, in the se\en- 

 teenth century, brought the Scotch in^•aders as far 

 south as Worcester. But never before, not even in the 

 dismal days that followed Bannockburn, has England, 

 the whole of England, cowered before the Scot. And 

 never in the heroic days of ancient Wales did Welshmen 

 so dominate their English brethren as they have done 

 this last month. 



At the bidding of the irreconcilables in both camps 

 — for in the subjugation of England mine-owner and 

 miner of the Celtic fringe were as one — the industry 

 of England was held up. Her factories were closed, 

 her forges deserted, the pulse of her life on her railways 

 flitkered and threatened to stand still. Her silent 

 ports became the temporary tombs of her merchant- 

 men. Five million women and children hungered for 

 bread and star\ed for lack of fire because Wales and 

 Scotland willed it. They had deposed old John Bull, 

 and they celebrated their victory by the slow torture 

 of his unfortunate subjects, not butchered but 

 hungered to make a Celtic holiday. 



Yet to all outward seeming John Bull had lost 

 I o e of the attributes of sovereignty. His acreage 

 was the same, and the numerical preponderance of his 

 teeming population was even greater than before. 

 His wealth had never been greater, and in the legisla- 

 ture his representatives outnumbered all those from 



