Book Review V: History of the English Speaking Peoples

Never have I read a most poetic tale of our nation's history as Churchill's 'History of English People'. I began reading this with recommendation from Mr Carl Benjamin who had said that he was reading it to his son to teach him about this island's great history.

In light of our current political problems, I can't help but relay Churchill's comments of the past to captions of today's problems. I apply in his own words the visions of the past to today's dilapidated Britain.

widespread the peace in the entire known world was maintained from generation to generation, and when the first pristine impulse of Christianity lifted men’s souls to the contemplation of new and larger harmonies beyond the ordered world around them. The gift which Roman civilisation had to bestow was civic and political.

Step by step they were led to practices which disposed to vice — the lounge, the bath, the elegant banquet. All this in their ignorance they called civilisation, when it was but part of their servitude.

Still, it is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invaders’ hearth.

Night had fallen on Britannia. Dawn rose on England, humble, poor, barbarous, degraded and divided, but alive. Britannia had been an active part of a world state; England was once again a barbarian island. It had been Christian, it was now heathen. Its inhabitants had rejoiced in well-planned cities, with temples, markets, academies. They had nourished craftsmen and merchants, professors of literature and rhetoric. For four hundred years there had been order and law, respect for property, and a widening culture. All had vanished. The buildings, such as they were, were of wood, not stone. The people had lost entirely the art of writing. Some miserable runic scribblings were the only means by which they could convey their thoughts or wishes to one another at a distance. Barbarism reigned in its rags, without even the stern military principles which had animated and preserved the Germanic tribes. The confusion and conflict of petty ruffians sometimes called kings racked the land. There was nothing worthy of the name of nationhood, or even of tribalism; yet this is a transition which the learned men of the nineteenth century banded themselves together to proclaim as an onward step in the march of mankind. We wake from an awful and, it might well have seemed, endless nightmare to a scene of utter prostration.

We discern across the centuries a commanding and versatile intelligence, wielding with equal force the sword of war and of justice; using in defence arms and policy; cherishing religion, learning, and art in the midst of adversity and danger; welding together a nation, and seeking always across the feuds and hatreds of the age a peace which would smile upon the land.

We have seen that Alfred in his day had never hesitated to use money as well as arms. Ethelred used money instead of arms. He used it in ever-increasing quantities, with everdiminishing returns. He paid as a bribe in 991 ten thousand pounds of silver, with rations for the invaders.

There were three principles upon which sovereignty could be erected: conquest, which none could dispute; hereditary right, which was greatly respected; and election, which was a kind of compromise between the two.

Roman imperialism and Christian ethics, pervaded by the social and military system of the age, jealous for its own interests and authority, but still preserving all that was left of learning and art.

“If its walls were iron,” said Philip in his wrath, “I would take it.” “If they were of butter,” retorted Richard, “I would hold it.”

Moreover, when the long tally is added it will be seen that the British nation and the English-speaking world owe far more to the vices of John than to the labours of virtuous sovereigns; for it was through the union of many forces against him that the most famous milestone of our rights and freedom was in fact set up.

Government must henceforward mean something more than the arbitrary rule of any man, and custom and the law must stand even above the King.

But the Scottish war was one in which, as a chronicler said, “every winter undid every summer’s work.”

Idle weaklings, dreamers, and adventurous boys disrupted the nascent unity of the Island.

In the long story of a nation we often see that capable rulers by their very virtues sow the seeds of future evil and weak or degenerate princes open the pathway of progress.