The History of Education / Educational Practice and Progress Considered as a Phase of the Development and Spread of Western Civilization

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

III. ENGLAND THE FIRST DEMOCRATIC NATION

EARLY BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH LIBERTY. The first western nation created from the wreck of the Roman Empire to achieve a measurement of self-government was England. Better civilized than most of the other wandering tribes, at the time of their coming to English shores, the invading Angles, Saxons, and Jutes early accepted Christianity (p. 120) and settled down to an agricultural life. On English shores they soon built up a for-the-time substantial civilization. This was later largely destroyed by the pillaging Danes, but with characteristic energy the English set to work to assimilate the newcomers and build up civilization anew. The work of Alfred (p. 146) in reëstablishing law and order, at a time when law and order scarcely existed anywhere in western Europe, will long remain famous. Later on, and at a time when German and Hun and Slav had only recently accepted Christianity in name and had begun to settle down into rude tribal governments, and when the Prussians in their original home along the eastern Baltic were still offering human sacrifices to their heathen gods (p. 120), the English barons were extorting Magna Charta from King John and laying the firm foundations of English constitutional liberty. In the meadow at Runnymede, on that justly celebrated June day, in 1215, government under law and based on the consent of the governed began to shape itself once more in the western world. Of the sixty-three articles of this Charter of Liberties, three possess imperishable value. These provided:

1. That no free man shall be imprisoned or proceeded against except by his peers, or the law of the land, which secured trial by jury.

2. That justice should neither be sold, denied, nor delayed.

3. That dues from the people to the king could be imposed only with the consent of the National Council (after 1246 known as Parliament).

So important was this charter to such a liberty-loving people as the English have always been, and so bitterly did kings resent its hampering provisions, that within the next two centuries kings had been forced to confirm it no less than thirty-seven times.

By 1295 the first complete Parliament, representative of the three orders of society—Lords, Clergy, and Commons—assembled, and in 1333 the Commons gained the right to sit by itself. From that time to the present the Commons, representing the people, has gradually broadened its powers, working, as Tennyson has said, [18] "from precedent to precedent," until to-day it rules the English nation. In 1376 the Commons gained the right to impeach the King's ministers, and in 1407 the exclusive right to make grants of money for any governmental purpose. Centuries ahead of other nations, this insured an almost continual meeting of the national assembly and a close scrutiny of the acts of both kings and ministers.

In 1604 King James I, imitating continental European precedents, proclaimed his theory as to the "divine right of kings" to rule, [19] and a struggle at once set in which carried the English into Civil War (1642- 49); led to the beheading of Charles I (1649); the overthrow and banishment of James II (1688); and the ultimate firm establishment, instead, of the "divine right of the common people." [20] In an age when the autocratic power and the divine right of kings to rule was almost unquestioned elsewhere in Europe, the English people compelled their king to recognize that he could rule over them only when he ruled in their interests and as they wished him to do. Though there was a period of struggle later on with the German Georges (I, II, and III), and especially with the honest but stupid George III, England has, since 1688, been a government of and by the people. [21] France did not rid itself of the "divine-right" conception until the French Revolution (1789), and Germany, Austria, and Russia not until 1918.

GROWTH OF TOLERANCE AMONG THE ENGLISH. The results of the long struggle of the English for liberty under law showed itself in many ways in the growth of tolerance among the people of the English nation. At a time when other nations were bound down in blind obedience to king and priest, and when dissenting minorities were driven from the land, the English people had become accustomed to the idea of individual liberty, regulated by law, and to the toleration of opinions with which they did not agree. These characteristically English conceptions of liberty under law and of the toleration of minorities have found expression in many important ways in the life and government of the people (R. 250), and have been elements of great strength in England's colonial policy. One of the important ways in which this growth of tolerance among the English showed itself was in the extension of a larger freedom to those unable to subscribe to the state religion.

Though the Reformation movement had stirred up bitter hatreds in England, as on the Continent, the English were among the first of European peoples to show tolerance of opposition in religious matters. The high English State Church, which had succeeded the Roman, had made but small appeal to many Englishmen. The Puritans had early struggled to secure a simplification of the church service and the introduction of more preaching (p. 359), and in the seventeenth century the organization of three additional dissenting sects, which became known as Unitarians, Baptists, and Quakers, took place. These sects divided off rather quietly, and their separation resulted only in the enactment of new laws regarding conformity, prayers, and teaching.

During the latter half of the seventeenth century, after the execution of Charles I (1649), the Puritans had temporarily risen to power, and during their control of affairs had imposed their strict Calvinistic standards as to Sabbath observance and piety on the nation. This was very distasteful to many, and from such strict observances the people in time rebelled. The standards of the English in personal morality, temperance, amusements, and manners at the beginning of the eighteenth century were not especially high, and in the reaction from Puritan control and strict religious observances the great mass of the people degenerated into positive irreligion and gross immorality. Drunkenness, rowdyism, robbery, blasphemy, brutality, lewdness, and prostitution became very common. This moral decline of the people the Church of England seemed powerless to arrest.

[Illustration: FIG. 151. JOHN WESLEY (1707-82)
Founder of Methodism.]

About 1730 a reform movement was begun under the able leadership of a young Oxford student by the name of John Wesley, ably seconded by George Whitefield (1714-70), with a view to reaching the classes so completely untouched by the high State Church. By traveling over the country and preaching a gospel of repentance, personal faith, and better living, these two young men made a deep emotional appeal, and soon gained a strong hold on the poorer and more ignorant classes of the people. Forbidden to preach in Anglican churches, and at times threatened with personal violence, these two men were in time forced into open rebellion against the Established Church. Finally they founded a new Church, which became known as the Methodist. [22] This new organization bore the same relation to the Church of England that the Anglican Church two hundred years before had borne to the Church of Rome. Thus was accomplished a second spiritual reformation in England, and one destined in time to spread to the colonies and deeply affect the lives of a large portion of the English people. [23] That such a well-organized sect could arise, such a moral reformation be preached, and the power of the Established Church be challenged so openly and without serious persecution, speaks much for the growth of religious tolerance among the English people since the days of the great Elizabeth. In 1778 the Roman Catholic Relief Act was adopted, and in 1779 dissenting ministers and schoolmasters were relieved from the disabilities under which they had so long remained. These acts indicate a further marked growth in religious tolerance on the part of the English nation. [24]

NEW EMANCIPATING AND EDUCATIVE INFLUENCES. In 1662 the first regular newspaper outside of Italy was established in England, and in 1702 the first daily paper. Small in size, printed on but one side of the sheet, and dealing wholly with local matters, these nevertheless marked the beginnings of that daily expression of popular opinion with which we are now so familiar. [25] After about 1705 the cheap political pamphlet made its appearance, and after 1710, instead of merely communicating news, the papers began the discussion of political questions.

By 1735 a revolution had been effected in England, and papers and presses began to be established in the chief cities and towns outside of London; the freedom of the press was in a large way completed, and newspapers, for the first time in the history of the world, were made the exponents of public opinion. The press in England in consequence became an educative force of great intellectual and political importance, and did much to compensate for the lack of a general system of schools for the people. In 1772 the right to publish the debates in Parliament was finally won, over the strenuous objections [26] of George III. In 1780 the first Sunday newspaper appeared, "on the only day the lower orders had time to read a paper at all," and, despite the efforts of religious bodies to suppress it, the Sunday paper has continued to the present and has contributed its quota to the education and enlightenment of mankind. In 1785 the famous London Times began to appear. In the middle of the eighteenth century debating societies for the consideration of public questions arose, and in 1769 "the first public meeting ever assembled in England, in which it was attempted to enlighten Englishmen respecting their political rights" was held, and such meetings soon became of almost daily occurrence. All these influences stimulated political thinking to a high degree, and contributed not only to a desire for still larger political freedom but for the more general diffusion of the ability to read as well (R. 250).

Still other important new influences arose during the early part of the eighteenth century, each of which tended to awaken new desires for schools and learning. In 1678 the first modern printed story to appeal to the masses, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, appeared from the press. Written, as it had been, by a man of the people, its simple narrative form, its passionate religious feeling, its picture of the journey of a pilgrim through a world of sin and temptation and trial, and its Biblical language with which the common people had now become familiar—all these elements combined to make it a book that appealed strongly to all who read or heard it read, and stimulated among the masses a desire to read comparable to that awakened by the chaining of the English Bible in the churches a century before (R. 170). In 1719 the first great English novel, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, and in 1726 Gulliver's Travels, added new stimulus to the desires awakened by Bunyan's book. All three were books of the common people, whereas the dramas, plays, essays, and scholarly works previously produced had appealed only to a small educated class. In 1751 what was probably the first circulating library of modern times was opened at Birmingham, and soon thereafter similar institutions were established in other English cities.

SCIENCE AND MANUFACTURING; THE NEW ERA. England, too, from the first, showed an interest in and a tolerance toward the new scientific thinking scarcely found in any other land. This in itself is indicative of the great intellectual progress which the English people had by this time made. [27] At a time when Galileo, in Italy, was fighting, almost alone, for the right to think along the lines of the new scientific method and being imprisoned for his pains, Englishmen were reading with deep interest the epoch-making scientific writings of Lord Francis Bacon, Earlier than in other lands, too, the Newtonian philosophy found a place in the instruction of the national universities, and English scholars began to employ the new scientific method in their search for new truths. The British Royal (Scientific) Society [28] had begun to meet as early as 1645, and ever since has published in its proceedings the best of English scientific thinking. By the reign of George I (1714-27) scientific work began to be popularized, and the first little booklets on scientific subjects began to appear. These popular presentations of what had been worked out were sold at the book stalls and by peddlers and were eagerly read; by the beginning of the reign of George III (1760) they had become very common. In 1704-10 the first "Dictionary of Arts and Sciences" was printed, and in 1768-71 the first edition (three volumes) of the now famous Encyclopedia Britannica appeared. In 1755 the famous British Museum was founded.

As early as 1698 a rude form of steam engine had been patented in England, and by 1712 this had been perfected sufficiently to be used in pumping water from the coal mines. In 1765 James Watt made the real beginning of the application of steam to industry by patenting his steam engine; in 1760 Wedgwood established the pottery industry in England; in 1767 Hargreaves devised the spinning-jenny, which banished the spindle and distaff and the old spinning-wheel; in 1769 Arkwright evolved his spinning-frame; and in 1785 Cartwright completed the process by inventing the power loom for weaving. In 1784 a great improvement in the smelting of iron ores (puddling) was worked out. These inventions, all English, were revolutionary in their effect on manufacturing. They meant the displacement of hand power by machine labor, the breakdown of home industry through the concentration of labor in factories, the rise of great manufacturing cities, [29] and the ultimate collapse of the age-old apprenticeship system of training, where the master workman with a few apprentices in his shop prepared goods for sale. They also meant the ultimate transformation of England from an agricultural into a great manufacturing and exporting nation, whose manufactured products would be sold in every corner of the globe.

By 1750 a change in attitude toward all the old intellectual problems had become marked in England, and by 1775 attention before unknown was being given there to social, political, economic, and educational questions. Religious intolerance was dying out, the harsh laws of earlier days had begun to be modified, new social and political interests [30] were everywhere attracting attention, and the great commercial expansion of England was rapidly taking shape. With England and France leading in the new scientific studies; England in the van in the development of manufacturing and the French to the fore in social influences and polite literature; England and the new American Colonies setting new standards in government by the people; the French theorists and economists giving the world new ideas as to the function of the State; enlightened despots on the thrones of Prussia, Austria, Spain, and Russia; and the hatreds of the hundred years of religious warfare dying out; the world seemed to many, about 1775, as on the verge of some great and far-reaching change in methods of living and in government, and about ready to enter a new era and make rapid advances in nearly all lines of human activity. The change came, but not in quite the manner expected.