18. The Celtic Fringe

We Celts henceforth will rule the roost in Britain.

What is that you mutter? "A very inopportune moment to proclaim the
fact." Well, no, I don't think so. And I'm sorry to hear you say it, for
if there _is_ a quality on which I plume myself, it's the delicate tact
that makes me refrain from irritating the susceptibilities of the
sensitive Saxon. See how polite I am to him! I call him sensitive. But,
opportune or inopportune, Lord Salisbury says we are a Celtic fringe. I
beg to retort, we are the British people.

"Conquered races," say my friends. Well, grant it for a moment. But in
civilised societies, conquerors have, sooner or later, to amalgamate
with the conquered. And where the vanquished are more numerous, they
absorb the victors instead of being absorbed by them. That is the
Nemesis of conquest. Rome annexed Etruria; and Etruscan Mæcenas,
Etruscan Sejanus organised and consolidated the Roman Empire. Rome
annexed Italy; and the _Jus Italicum_ grew at last to be the full Roman
franchise. Rome annexed the civilised world; and the provinces under
Cæsar blotted out the Senate. Britain is passing now through the
self-same stage. One inevitable result of the widening of the electorate
has been the transfer of power from the Teutonic to the Celtic half of
Britain. I repeat, we are no longer a Celtic fringe: at the polls, in
Parliament, we are the British people. Lord Salisbury may fail to
perceive that fact, or, as I hold more probable, may affect to ignore
it. What will such tactics avail? The ostrich is not usually counted
among men as a perfect model of political wisdom.

And _are_ we, after all, the conquered peoples? Meseems, I doubt it.
They say we Celts dearly love a paradox--which is perhaps only the
sensible Saxon way of envisaging the fact that we catch at new truths
somewhat quicker than other people. At any rate, 'tis a pet little
paradox of my own that we have never been conquered, and that to our
unconquered state we owe in the main our Radicalism, our Socialism, our
ingrained love of political freedom. We are tribal not feudal; we think
the folk more important than his lordship. The Saxon of the south-east
is the conquered man: he has felt on his neck for generations the heel
of feudalism. He is slavish; he is snobbish; he dearly loves a lord. He
shouts himself hoarse for his Beaconsfield or his Salisbury. Till
lately, in his rural avatar, he sang but one song--

"God bless the squire and his relations,
And keep us in our proper stations."

Trite, isn't it? but so is the Saxon intelligence.

Seriously--for at times it is well to be serious--South-Eastern England,
the England of the plains, has been conquered and enslaved in a