The Guardian THURSDAY, APRIL 14, 1927. NOTES AND COMMENTS

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume XLV, Issue 3080, 14 April 1927, Page 4

The Guardian THURSDAY, APRIL 14, 1927. NOTES AND COMMENTS

Printed at Lecston, Canterbury. New Zealand, on Tuesday and Friday I afternoons.

THE GENIUS OF ENGLAND

In the courseoorir a recent speech Lord Grey of Fallodon, declared: "If I were asked to sum up in one sentence the quality which has' most helped the English race in its development, I think it

has been the power to combine a passion for individual liberty with a sense of the necessity for order." The English race, said Lord Grey, had always held the view that no individual, and still more no class, was to be trusted with power over other men or classes. Accordingly, such power was taken from the aristocracy, and then first the middle classes and next the wage earners became invested with power. "Now we have achieved that, and power ?s distributed throughout every class in the country, what is the future going to be? What I trust will happen in the future is .this: If any one class, even thought it be the most numerous, attempt's to use poAver solely for its own interests at the expense of the others it will find there is no community sense in the nation which will prevent such abuse. The Spectator comments that as early as the Roman historian Tacitus we find a generalised character of the British race. In his "Life of Agricola," Tacitus writes: '' The Britons themselves are a people who cherfully comply with the levies of- men and Avith the imposition of taxes, and with all the duties enjoined by Government; provided they receive no illegal treatment and insults from their governors; those they bear with impatience. They obey just laws, but never submit to be slaves." And in his "Germania" Tacitus gives a picture of the Teutons, and of our Anglo-Sax-on ancestors, which is very like what happens under our system, of representative government. "Affairs of small [ moment the chiefs determine, about matters of higher consequence the whole nation deliberates; yet in such, sort that whatever depends upon the. pleasure and decision of the people is examined and discussed by the chiefs." iA later commentator, Ralph, Waldo Emerson, said in 1847 when he visited England: "The English must be seen in action. In prosperity they are moody and dampish, but in adversity they are grand. I see England not dispirited, but weak, but well remembering that she has seen dark days before, with a kind of instinct that in storm of battle and calamity she has a secret vigour and pulse like a cannon. I see her in her old age, not decrepit but still young, and still daring to believe in her power of endurance and expan-

sion.''