The Evacuation of England: The Twist in the Gulf Stream

by L. P. Gratacap

“I think,” Leacraft slowly replied, while Agnes Ethel Tobit—she who had become inferentially the wife of the handsome Thomsen—arose and, walking to her husband’s side, leaned over the back of his chair, thus looking down upon the speaker, who had turned towards Thomsen, as if her movement was dictated by a desire to hear his friend more distinctly; “I think that the finest, the most inspiring—yes, the most delicate and subtle virtues flourish in a republic, such as this Republic of the United States is. I confess, I am in love with it; I love its people. They are superbly human, and humanly noble. The American gentleman, and he lives on no particular and restricted level—you find him among the firemen, the policemen, the clerks, the fathers of families—this unique man is always gracious, delightful, unerringly just. I believe that these traits develop most naturally under the dispensations of equality, reasonably understood. I think the most fruitful national life ensues, when a nation stands fundamentally, in its government, and in its social conceptions, for common sense standards, and an unqualified acceptance of the principles of personal freedom. I like these Americans. To me, their ardor, their naturalness, their hearty friendship, their generous self-forgetfulness, and a certain deferential amusement at the foibles of less emancipated cultures, is fascinating. Of course, there are stupid rich Americans, dressed in most obnoxious livery of affectation and imitation, men and women who have treacherous tendencies in their feelings and desires, willing always to kick their own country, and willing to leave it, but never willing to relinquish the luxuries its prosperity has enabled them to enjoy. There are also hateful middle-class Americans, who deteriorate the impressions made by the best aspects of the American heart and mind; but the substance and the spirit of the American life, however much disguised, or, from momentary and economic reasons obscured, is to me the most palatable; it is palpably the best life now shown on the world; it is the most energizing, the most alert, and it carries the power of enormous assimilation, because it is built on the essence of manhood, the respect for the rights of others. I know what is in your thoughts and on the point of your tongue. You would ask: How about the Chinaman, the Negro, and the Japanese, perhaps? That is a long question, and has nothing to do with my contention, for in a nutshell, respect for others’ rights does not involve respect for others’ habits, and generous as the Americans are, they are not so stupid as to wish to imperil, for an unnecessary sentiment, the hard-gained benefits of their own national experiment. They have already leavened the whole earth; it’s not to be expected that they digest all of its rubbish as well. Let the rest of the world do something for itself, and clean its own social sloughs, by a little more admixture of freedom and sympathy.

“All this may seem to you intensely disagreeable, perhaps a little disloyal, but you wrong me. If I might answer your question without more evasion. I would peremptorily declare that I hoped that the new England in Australia would put on the lineaments, nay, incorporate the very breath and body of this land. I know it has not; possibly it could not; possibly pernicious and selfish instrumentalities have made it impossible. Pardon my intractable enthusiasm, but do not mistrust my heart. It is always England’s. The night is too calm, too beautiful, to disgrace it with wrangling. Let us tell the story of the last years to each other. Mine is a short one, and can come last; but yours? Ah! well I know some of it,” and Leacraft, without constraint or any show of vacillating envy, smiled up in the face of the pretty woman who looked down at him, and deeply that woman’s heart honored him for his magnanimous courage.

There was a pause for an instant, and then Thomsen began. He rose from his chair, and walking to the railing of the piazza, sat on it, half turned to the paling East, half towards Leacraft, and told the story of the transplanted English nation.

That story can be told in more exacting phraseology than the colloquial method permits, and until his narrative becomes more personal, let us authentically review the events he rehearsed, which form a unique historic episode.

With the departure of the King from the shores of England, the actual evacuation of the island began, and the means and ways of transferring the people previously thought out, were carefully applied.

The moment the King and Parliament arrived in Australia, a predicament arose. The King was recognized as king, functional in Australia and in England, functional anywhere the English control was established; but the Parliament of England, as the highest law-giving legislature of the realm, did it supersede the regional legislation of Australia? Was the autonomic power of the provinces of Australia obliterated with the arrival of the supreme legislative body of the British Empire? There was one broad, obvious proposition. The remedy to all doubt, collision, and ambiguity was to resume in Australia the exact conditions which had vanished in England, and now naturally sought a restatement and erection in the land the King and Parliament had reached. And this was generally accepted. There was a cordial and almost precipitate display of adhesion to the new plan. It destroyed the independent existence of the various sections of Australia, and made the continental island a unit under the control of the Parliament, just as England had been. The enthusiasm which greeted this solution was adequate and convincing. It gave renewed hope to the patriotic and loyal souls who prayed and worked for the re-production of the England they had left. The King himself responded to this burst of practical allegiance with a wise and fervent expression of affection and thankfulness. It was a gem of deliberate composition, and was well received. Meetings of endorsement and proclamations of ratification were made everywhere, and in the tumult of acclamation it escaped notice that a formidable opposition had become organized for a forcible resistance to the whole scheme. This was over-awed or suppressed, not without a show of force, in which Thomsen had been himself engaged, and which brought about some adventures around the region at Mount Harwick, in New South Wales.

Thomsen, after the conclusion had been reached that his own and Miss Tobit’s families should follow the stream of people going to Australia, rather, than was at first intended, to coincide with Leacraft’s wishes for them all to visit America, had sought employment in the Government’s service, among those to whom had been entrusted the regulation of this colossal emigration. He was therefore well acquainted with its various phases and results.

When the King and the Parliament left England, over two millions had preceded them, being naturally, those who accepted the situation, and who, besides, were not specifically limited for their support to investments at home. They went everywhere, many to the continent, many to India, perhaps half to America, which grew more and more, before the eyes of the people, as the most natural, most desirable, the most friendly home. A large number strayed to Africa, and yet others sought the expanding possibilities of South America. Englishmen had acquired such extended interests, drew so largely upon the resources of the entire world for their support, that now in a way they found natural business refuges all over its varied surface. It was a happy consequence of the constraining littleness of their own island.

The financial question was the real difficulty, apart from the harsh bereavement and hardship of the divorce from all their previous living and associations. It was solved, at least partially, by the Government issuing paper money, similar to the greenbacks, which carried the United States through the Civil War. These were furnished to applicants upon deposit of sworn, approved and examined statements of their property of all kinds in England. Twenty-five per cent of the amount thus appearing was given, or rather loaned, to the applicant, and with this he was enabled to make a start in the new quarters he had selected. The plan involved the assumption of an enormous burden by the Government, and an unqualified confidence in it by the people.

Of course, England was not in any sense to become a depopulated island. Its real estate values, though shrunk to slender fractions of their former worth, would yet have some value, and whereas, in the case of a manufacturer, the Government made the loan upon his attested resources in machinery and certified correspondence, the risk was reduced sensibly within discoverable limits. Loss, agitation, dislocations, in many cases ruin, resulted, but the transfer of the manufacturing plants was made most skilfully, and before the factories in England were closed, the same products were being produced in Australia. The menace of the emergency had startled Englishmen into a really reasonable and adequate show of sense, quickness and resource; usually poor business men, torpid and conservative, shackled with a kind of mild and traditional laziness, they became, under the stimulation of the danger of extinction, active and wary, and intensive.