THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND 2G3 



■of wlioin I think, of modern democracy. He showed us that it was 

 out of the bosom of our Englisli race, out of the Puritanism of Eliot 

 and Ham})den and Hooker and Vane, and not out of the French rev- 

 olution, that the democratic tendencies of the modern wo^'ld had their 

 rise. England has gone on developing that democracy, but it has 

 been slowly. England has become an enfranchised nation only in our 

 time. When Gladstone, in 1866, championed the first bill for the ex- 

 tension of the suffrage, England had only a little over one million 

 voters in a total of over five million male adults. It was onl}' in 1885 

 that England realh' became an enfi-anchised nation. At that time 

 there were over thiee millions of " outlanders " in England^ and the 

 })arty which fought the efforts of all those years to make England a 

 true democracy was that very party that in the last two 3'ears has 

 been so anxious for the suffrage for certain English gold-miners in 

 distant Africa ! 



England is in many respects, let us be quick to acknowledge, a more 

 democratic nation than we are. The w'ill of her Parliament is alwaj^s 

 the mirror of the will of her people. In the wonderful extent to which 

 her peo])le are doing things upon a cooperative basis, in their munic- 

 ipal achievements, the 0})eration of street railways, and the doing of 

 other things by the people for the peo])le, England is making herself 

 ii truer commonwealth than our own. She is cumbered by her mon- 

 archy and hereditary aristocrac}^ and needs rejuiblican forms. We 

 are thankful for anx'thing in which she outstrips us, as we are thankful 

 for anything in which we outstrip her. We have done wrong, even 

 iis she has done wrong, and we both sadly need i)urgation toda}' ; but 

 the English race here and there, through the centuries, has been work- 

 ing for freedom, for the extension of edifying i)olitical ideas, and for 

 better things. 



As the American walks the corridors at ^^'estminster, his heart does 

 not beat fastest when he sees the painted kings upon the painted win- 

 dows of the House of Lords, nor even when he stands l)y the white 

 form of Hampden at the Commons' door; it Ijeats fastest when, in 

 tlie great series of pictures of English history, he looks on that of the 

 Pilgrim Fatliers leaving England to plant New England, li^ngland, 

 ■svho hurried them out, will not let that scene go toda}^ as a j)art of 

 American histor}' only, but claims it as one of the proudest scenes in 

 lier own liistory, too. It is a grateful thing. May the motlier coun- 

 try and the daughter country stand .shoulder to shoulder — never when 

 either lapses into sin and does the deed of shame, but always when 

 ■either is devoted to whatever makes for the peace and freedom of the 

 ■world. 



