England in Transition

THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY style, which 1S to bring home to the reader, by hook or by crook, the vital implications of the subject treated. The upshot is an extremely original and vigorous piece of work. ENGLAND IN TRANSITION* EDGAR McINNIS To anyone who ponders upon the development of 'the world during the past sixty years, a most disquieting thought is likely to present itself. It is that the allotted span of human life, brief though it seems in many aspects; is probably under modern conditions far too long for the public good. When one measures the significance of threescore y~ars 'and ten by the changes that take place during that period, the strain upon human adaptability becomes alittle frightening. And when one reflects, not merely that the outlook of men now governing England was moulded in the heyday of Salisbury and Chamberlain, but that there are men in active public positions who have clear memories of the Second Reform Bill and the Franco-Pru~sian War, it is surely not ungracious to suggest that even the wisdom of long experience may not be a complete substitute for that freshness of outlook which is so urgently needed in' this rapidly changing world. ·Something of the drastic nature of those changes is studied in this volume by Mr. Ensor. It is the second volume to appear in the projected fourteen-volume "Oxford History of England," and will take its place at the end of the completed series. Its scope is the period from 1870 to 1914; and though the time thus covered is ]ess than half a century) it is one so full of vital struggles and fundamental problems that it may justly be regarded in , perspective as one of the critical periods in English hjstory. The period, says Mr. Ensor in his introductio.n, may be viewed in at least five different lights. It saw the rapid extension of the democratic principle already inaugurated by the first two Referm Bills. It saw "the conversion of the English as a whole into. a school-taught and literate people." It saw the final ruin of English agriculture, and the first faint menace to English industrial supremacy . Finally, it witnessed the reassertion of Brjtain's imperial *England, I87o-I9I4, by R. C. K. Ensor, Oxford University Press, 1936. 614 REVIEWS destiny which was to have such remarkable political significanceand also such fateful consequences. But these features, as Mr. Ensor recognizes, are not exhaustive; and perhaps not all of them are salient. Behind them lies one single dominant theme-the struggle of England to find a new orientation, urged on by desperate necessity. This was a developmen t which nothing at the opening of the period seemed to foreshadow . For twenty years Engla~d had enjoyed a full-blooded self-confidence born of a swelling material prosperity. Class struggles were in abeyance. The revolt of Chartism had been succeeded by the moderation of Trade Unionism. The struggle between the landed and industrial interests had ended in the grudging acceptance of the new middle-class supremacy. "Peace, retrenchment, and reform" were the accepted watchwords of the nation; and, the reforms of Gladstone·s first ministry, however Disraeli and the Tories might fulminate, were on the whole the acceptable embodiment of the national desires. But they marked the end of an era. With the depression of the seventies, V1e country found itself faced with a new and unforeseen situation. It found that its international position and its relation to the rest of the world had profoundly altered; it found that, partly as a result of the new 'democracy, the balance in domestic politics had entirely changed. New forces were beginning to stir; new classes were intruding their perturbing demands into public life.' Cross-currents were setting in that were to grow steadily more turbulent as the period advanced. It is the emergence and the increasing clash of these conflicting forces that forms the story of these forty-four years. On the 'political side, the significance of this development lies in the steady movement towards divisions on class lines. The emergence of the Labour p'arty is only one symptom of this. Mr. Ensor recognizes...