[39-1] R.W. Emerson, English Traits, 1856, Boston reprint, 1894, p.145.
[40-1] R. W. Emerson, English Traits, 1856, Boston reprint, 1894, p.291.
[45-1] C. A. W. Pownall, Thomas Pownall, London, 1908, p. 401.
{47}
III
INDIVIDUALISM
The individualism of the Pan-Angles is rooted in our earliest struggles for personal liberty, and its first successes were won far beyond the confines of known history. The institutions in which it is expressed we trace back through English to Teuton practices, where they are lost from sight. How they have been modified and enlarged since, and what we have wrought under the impulse of this dominant characteristic is abundantly recorded. It is the mainspring of all our achievement.
The Pan-Angles collectively are conservative and slow to move. They respect tradition and law, and break with the past less easily than more volatile peoples. The individual Pan-Angle, on the other hand, makes often his own law, disregarding and outrunning the law of his group. It is a trait we approve; the Robin Hoods ashore and the Drakes afloat have our sympathy, as well as often our gratitude for the substantial gifts their individual enterprise has left us. No theory, no agreed-upon plan has led us in our various endeavours, but always the success of some man who went that way on his own. Adventurers have gone out across trackless land or water wastes, and we have followed with our commerce and settlers. {48} Idealists have gone questing for religious or civil liberty, and we, guided by their footprints, draw bills of rights, reform our property laws, and our suffrage, and remove religious disabilities.
From less than sixty thousand our holdings have increased to more than sixteen million square miles,[48-1] through the spirit of individual men. Each acquisition presents similar features. A Pan-Angle wanders off and finds something he wishes. He takes it. Sometimes he calls on the homestayers for aid. Sometimes they give it; often not. Seven times the British Isles refused to acknowledge that the British flag flew over New Zealand;[48-2] and the Queenslanders, who in 1883 raised the Britannic colours in New Guinea, were ordered from London to lower them again.[48-3] The pioneer puts the best he has into the struggle, for far from being an altruist with one eye on a grateful posterity, he is fighting for his own valued possession, whether it be land, the right to trade, or to collect copra in comfort. If there is room for more than one, and the chance of success promising, other adventurous individuals join him. Together they at last attract the ear of the home government which, if induced to interfere, does so to protect the interests of its citizens—or subjects, as the case may be—from outside encroachment. The sway of the Pan-Angles has thus been {49} extended-a little.[49-1] The next little will be added in a similar manner. No one plans for it, but in some opportune moment the leader arises.
In some cases elaborately organized companies with directors and stockholders seem to take the place of the individual. That is only seeming. Whether it be the East India Company, or the Hudson's Bay Company, or the British South Africa Company, there is always a Rhodes at the heart of it. And half of its success in the end depends on agents who take their own counsel and work by themselves, thereby extending their company's power, as the company extends the nation's. That this character was recognized from the beginning witnesses the Royal Charter granted "the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay."[49-2]