u 
LAND ik WATER 
April 2b, 191 7 
Britain's Biggest Parish 
By Francis Stopford 
S< ) inudi is spoken and written in the grand stvlc of tiie 
British Knijiire in these days that one would like for 
once to depict it in a lowlier and a personal aspect- 
as the parish of certain famihes scattered throughout 
the British Isles. It is an honest point of view, and possibly 
one may discern in it one of the secrets of Britain's undoubted 
colonising success. Any superior l)eing will asse\eratc wt; 
are nationally insular," individually parochial, and that 
wherever we go we take with us "is our high altar the parish 
pump, that democratic provider of fluid refreshment, deemed 
non-mto.\icating, for until recently diphtheria and typhoid 
germs were not regarded as toxins but as acts of God, a point 
on which we are still rather hazy. 
There lies before me a family tree. Let the family be called 
Alexander; it is not t!i t name, but it lias a. good 
sound, and connotes w. lyring. Also I understand 
Alexander is Sandy writ large, and this family m its origin 
was Scottish, for the founder, so far as the pri?sent article is 
concerned, was a doctor, who practised medicine at Banff 
during the middle years M the eighteenth centurv. The 
wander-virus declares itself in- .^Jc next generation, "for the 
Banff doctor lived to sec his eldest son a famous London 
physician and a mcmbir of the Royal Society ; to mourn 
the death of his sixth son. an ofiiccy in the Royal Xavy, who 
went down with Kempenfeld in the, Rayal (ieor'^c, "and to 
hear of the wedding of his youngest and tenth child in Bengal, 
a union from which sj)rang ten children, po not let the idea 
arise that this kind of family tree is peculiar to Scotland ; 
it has certainly flourished there exceedingly ; but there is 
not an linglish county which does not contain several of 
the species, and Ireland abounds in glorious specimens. 
A distinctive characteristic of these family trees is their 
l)rolificness. Some offshoots of course never marrv, but 
granting wedlock, in the case of the Alexanders, fro"m the 
niiddle of the eighteenth century to the later years of the 
nineteenth century, seven was a small family, "ten was the 
more usual number, and one splendid patriarch begot eighteen 
sons and daughtei:s and lived to welcome into the world two 
score and ten grandchildren. 
From the end of the eighteenth century onwards India 
naturally attracted man\- of this wander-stricken elan, but 
they never became an Anglo-Indian house like the Plowdens, 
Trevors, Beadons and Rivett-Camacs, to (juote Ki]jling's 
classical instances. India, for the Alexanders, was ime 
street in their parish which was the British Kmpire. We 
iind brothers born on the slopes of the Himalayas taking 
to themselves wives in early manhood, one in Winnipeg, the 
other in Brisbane. Had the call of the East been in the 
blood, one or other would have sought " The Tomb of his 
Ancestors," in the Chinn manner as Krjjling describes it. 
Nevertheless, let me write down in his own words as neai" as 
may be how an Alexander described his experience of India 
some twenty years ago : 
" Modern Indian histor\' is for me largely a family affair. 
I stand in Delhi ; out of that gate my mother's brother and 
his wife escape as the mutineers stream in on that day of 
May- ; she, poor woman, never recovers from the hardships 
of the flight. Through the breach in the Kashmir Gate my 
father's brother is among the first to enter with his regiment 
of Light Infantry. I attciad a funeral of a Mutiny veteran 
at Lahore : waiting for th*liKirse, I wander ;in the cemetery, 
and stumbling over the graves of two small children am 
introduced, through the headstones, to two first cousins, who, 
had they li\'ed, would have been about my age. Driving 
in Amritsar I pass down the street called after an \nicle. At 
an afternoon party of a Deccan nobleman in Hyderabad 
to iny suq)rise another uncle glares down on me as I drink 
my coffet!, from an atrocious canvas. Business takes me to 
an out-of-the-way station in the South Indian hills, a hundred 
miles from the nearest railway station with unly half-a-dozen 
Hurf)iJean residents, and in the cemetery I run across my 
.mother's uncle, who took his rest fifty years before I came. 
livery Indian cathedral and scores of Indian churches contain 
the record of baptisms, weddings and burials of my people. 
Yet the Alexanders are not an Anglo-Indian family ; there 
must be scores with a clbser and morie intimate connection. 
Think what it would mean were we Lawrences, Battyes or 
Lushingtons. You may call this sentiment parochial. It is. 
And if you can estimate its force, you may be able to gauge 
the heat of our wrath when some act of injnstire is done to 
India for political considerations at home. It's no use 
talking economics or jiolitics to us — parochial us. justice 
and straight dealing have become a sort of moral village 
green for families such as mine, and the least encroadmient 
ou it is resented bitterlv and hotly." 
To comprehend British rule in India the family or jjarocliial 
side of the business cannot be ignored. It has no doubt 
its defects, but its strength and its influence for good arc 
undoubted, and it has made for a closer and better racial 
understanding. But we must now leave India and pause 
for a moment at Mauritius, where several Alexanders culti- 
vate sugar. The pioneers of sugar cultivation in Natal 
include an Alexander, and the family figures big in the 
development and. administration of that colcmy. Australia 
is, so to speak, next door to Natal, and Jn the middle of last 
century many wander to the Antipodes ; New South W;Ues, 
^'ictoria, Queensland and the north and south islands of 
New Zealand provide work for their hands. Others bom in 
Kngland strike westward and make themselves homes iji 
Canada, some this side of the Rockies,, cHhers beyond. The 
British Kmpire has been none too big for this family, and 
to-day it holds not a province where you may not find an 
Alexander, living or dead. At Sea', shroud an Alexander in 
sail-cloth and tie a round sliot to his heels and the odds are 
he will jostle a cousin before he sinks to sleep. 
.As for this family, so of scores of others in these islands. 
The British Empire is their only tnie*parish. They have 
iK'aten its bounds and are familiar with its bridle-paths arid 
bye-lanes. In the old days, when communications were 
clilhcult, letters were of greater rarity and so more prized ; 
they passed from household to household, and the children 
1)efore they reached even their teens, had lost all sense of the 
bigness of the world. Canada, South Africa, India, Aus- 
tralia and New Zealand seemed to them hardly more distant 
than Counties at the other end of lingland ; they ceVtainly 
knew more about them, for the latter were merely geographical 
expressions, while the former were the homes of men and 
women who periodically appeared above the horizon and 
tipped them with sih'er or gold before they disappeared to the 
place whence they came. Though they were not conscious of 
it, the centrifugal force of 1% families was in operation. 
We cannot estimate the loss to the Empu'e since the popvila- 
tion of the nursery has been governed by the laws of Provi- 
dence, but this we do know, that were these laws in force 
in the eighteenth and> nineteenth centuries, the British 
Empire would not be what it is. This family tree bears 
powerful evidence to this fact. It is the elder sons who 
settle at home, tin: younger ones who wander. Big families 
in professional homes usually s])ell poverty, or at least strait- 
ness of means, either of which is a builder of character, and 
also— a factor not to be overlooked — in big families the spipt 
of adventure and the sense of self-reliance are fostered from 
infancy. It is a mistake to suppose it was a thirst for gold 
that took these men abroad; they certainly went to seek 
their fortune, but fortune with them did not imi)ly solely 
riches. They have family traditions to live up to ; those 
who gain wealth are few. But their special glory is that 
the men and women of their blood, from generation to 
generation, have been of the web and woof of Empire ; their 
family story cannot be detached from the devcloi)ment of 
those civiUsations and lands where two centuries ago Britain 
was an rmknown name or almost so. 
So much for the past ; what of the present ? I beheve 
the same parochial sentiment is at work knitting the British 
Empire closer and closer together. Big families, but lower 
in the social scale, have been largely responsible for the 
emigration of recent year's. Sons and daughters have gone 
to the Southern Isles or the Ear West, leaving behind many 
lit their kith and kin. Writing, thanks to elementary educa- 
tion, is the accomplishment of all, and we know from tlu; 
exjjerience of the war that vivid expression has nothing to 
do with education ; it is a far comuKiner gift than was once 
thought. They write Iiouk; descriptions of their novel sur- 
roundings ; more than that, they send accounts of the 
christening of the newest arrival ; of the wedding of grandson jL 
or granddaughter and of the Imrial of this or that exile, 
riiotographs follow. And so tlie British Em])ire continues te 
be the i)arisli of more and more British families. 
There are certain vigorous growths in the vegetable woild 
which spread through their roots. They extend under the 
surface and throw up new shoots at distant spots, in a sur- 
prising manner. The spread of famiFies through the British 
Empire is after this fashion ; it is only when you dig under 
the surface that you realise the close network of the roots. 
One is a little apt to overlook this fact, especially when 
more important aspects are nnder^^disrussion ; so this article 
lias been wTitten, not to deprecate the other points of view, 
aiwut which we cannot hear enough, but to recall the number 
of souls in all stations of life and in all parts of the world 
for whom the British Empire is nothing but one bit: parish. 
